Jim Thorpe Borough Council put the stamp of approval Thursday night on its 2024 budgets, which call for a slight property tax increase and hikes across all utilities.

The 0.64-mill tax increase, borough officials said, means an additional $44.61, on average, on the bill of a property owner.

Residents will see a 5.75% increase on the water portion of their utility bill, while sewer costs are escalating 2%.

Borough Manager Maureen Sterner attributed a lot of the water and sewer increase to the cost of chemicals.

“They have skyrocketed,” she said. “We increased the amount we had budgeted for this year and we blew past it. It is double what we had budgeted.”

The borough spent $28,000 on chemicals in 2021, $39,000 in 2022, an estimated $62,800 for 2023 and has budgeted $72,200 for 2024.

During its budget meetings in November, council members discussed offsetting some of the sewer and water increase by tapping into cash reserves. Such a move would have dropped the cash carryover balance from $65,014 to $42,594.

“I don’t know that for 86 cents I would want to see the reserve dug into like that,” Councilman Michael Rivkin said at the time. “We’re already starting to see equipment that is only 5 or 6 years old give us failure.”

Outgoing councilman Jay Miller concurred, noting that there aren’t many cheap fixes in the water department.

“You’re not talking $20 at the hardware store when something goes wrong,” he said. “If we had a couple million in reserve then I would have an issue with 86 cents, but that isn’t the case.”

Altogether, the average utility bill for a borough resident is set to jump from $25 per month to $51.60 per month due in large part to the borough’s new five-year sanitation contract with Tamaqua Transfer. The contract totals $4.61 million, more than double what the borough paid for its current deal, which runs out at the end of January.

Larry Wittig, Tamaqua Transfer president and owner, told council last month that many of the costs driving the increase are out of the company’s control.

“The landfill raises our rates every year,” Wittig said. “Last year it doubled. Who knows where fuel is going? I gave my employees a 25% increase in salaries to keep them. We will not grow beyond our ability to perform. We are the only contractor that has been very consistent with bidding.”