White Oak set for trash bill crackdown

The effort will start with the borough’s 15 largest delinquent accounts.

Solicitor Ashley Puchalski told White Oak Council at Monday’s meeting that she will continue to pursue unpaid trash bills in the borough.

Council held discussions last month about authorizing the solicitor to file magisterial complaints about the top 15 unpaid account holders to make accountable for paying for their garbage service.

“I think we have exhausted that time period and I feel comfortable moving forward in terms of reaching back out to folks who have asked to be on payment plans and we haven’t received the signed plans back, so I’ll be following up with them,” Puchalski said. “And then we’ll be starting to file these magis- trate complaints for the top 15 delinquent accounts holders.

“I haven’t received correspondence from any of them regarding inquiries about their payment plan or to sign up for a payment plan. So at this point, I think we should be filing the municipal liens and go through the magistrate to try to at least force compliance on their end.”

A mortgage lien is a security for ensuring a lender gets back their money when entering into a mortgage agreement with another party. A Pennsylvania mortgage lien is a legal claim a lender has on a property until the property’s owner repays a mortgage loan.

Puchalski suggested the action as a “different mechanism of enforcement” in addition to judgment from the magistrate, but it depends on the situation, and just the highest 15 delinquent account holders will be filed right now.

“In the past, we have gotten a positive response to filing magistrate complaints,” Puchalski said. “I think that is the best next method of enforcement, and I obviously have authorization from you folks to go ahead and do that now that the time has run from a notice letter. It is time to move forward with that.” None of the filed complaints to the magistrate have a return letter, Puchalski added, because there are situations where they have had mail that is unable to be returned to its sender.

Puchalski’s staff will sometimes find an alternative address, which is sometimes successful and sometimes not, with the resident being deceased, explaining why they are not paying their trash bill.

Since letters were sent out July 5, the borough has collected almost $26,000. Twenty-two delinquent account holders paid in full, 30 people enrolled in payment plans and about 25 payment plans are outstanding, according to Puchalski, who added she had more than 55 calls over the past few weeks. She gets an updated list every Friday.

“I got calls for people enrolling in payment plans up to today,” she said. “There were people that were receiving the letter from USPS after we sent them, and I have been trying to give a little bit of grace in terms of people receiving them, and it says in the letter that they have 14 days to call me to get on a payment plan.

“There’s been a lot of people who are just one year delinquent, and in the cases where I have a person that only has a $363 delinquency from just 2023, and $333 in this year, I have been really encouraging them to make a payment plan with me for the whole year so they can be settled up with me before the end of 2024 so that starting in 2025, they are completely free to go and free of delinquency. So that’s what they’ve been doing if they aren’t paying completely outright.”

Borough Manager John Palyo stated that they sent out 325 delinquent letter notices, and it goes back to more than 10 years delinquent to the smallest being one year delinquent.

“We’ve done the whole spectrum,” Palyo said. “If payments are directly made here without some sort of coordination and the delinquent collection efforts, most postings go into the system and Vicky sends a report to Ashley so that Ashley’s files will reconcile her files in the system files.”

Many council members agreed that a vast majority of the delinquent accounts know they need to pay their garbage bill, and aren’t.

“They have had enough notice for us to move on,” council President Charles Davis said. “These people, they know.”

Councilwoman Amanda DePaulis said the vast majority of people know they owe the borough, but there may be some stragglers who may have just moved to the borough, in which case the resident will be notified on how trash bill collection works in their community.

Councilman George Pambacas was worried that people who owe money in property taxes are on the same list of delinquent trash residents, so the borough is going to investigate further.

Puchalski hopes for a larger social media effort for people to be more aware that the borough is cracking down on delinquent trash bills.

“Going into 2025, I think we need to have a concerted effort here in the borough to do something, even if it’s social media or our website, to really make it known that trash bills are out and due because I still get comments from people saying I didn’t receive this,” Puchalski said. “Take this with a grain of salt. The mail isn’t as reliable as we all would like it to be, so I think we should really strategize in the beginning of the year with us constantly having those posted places — reminding people to call the borough on top of their trash bill.”

In the upcoming voting meeting, the borough may vote on lien letters to some residence and being able to authorize those letters.

Other things that may be brought up for a vote include:

• Moving forward with a new server for the police department as long as a meeting with the solicitor occurs with the server company.

• Getting the authorization to condemn some blighted properties in the borough.

• Replacing a 2007 mower with a brand new one due to it being in disrepair and costing more to fix than buying a new one.

“Going into 2025, I think we need to have a concerted effort here in the borough to do something, even if it’s social media or our website, to really make it known that trash bills are out and due.”

ASHLEY PUCHALSKI

WHITE OAK SOLICITOR