While they were approving $$$ for turf...

The Trib was busy at work writing about our volunteer fire department in Health-insurance mandate poses potential hitch for volunteer fire companies.

Historically, the IRS has considered volunteer firefighters employees for tax purposes, regardless of whether they receive compensation, said Douglas Smith, managing shareholder of Downtown law firm Jackson Lewis PC. 

Unless the agency updates its ruling or the regulations that are being written specifically exclude volunteer firefighters, “they're going to have to provide insurance to a group of volunteers,” he said. 

Mt. Lebanon's staff of 17 paid firefighters is supplemented by about 50 volunteer firefighters, Chief Nick Sohyda said. 

While Sohyda said he's “not panicking” over the situation yet, he said he will have to track the hours of all volunteers to make sure they are serving fewer than 30 hours a week — the threshold above which workers are considered full-time under the law and eligible for health insurance. That task alone would be difficult and costly, he said. 

“What most fire companies would do is limit the number of hours to keep them under the threshold,” he said.

Three commissioners had no problem allocating $637,400 from the unassigned funds on Tuesday evening for artificial turf at Middle and Wildcat Fields. In fact, the Commission is considering borrowing $900,000 for storm sewer repairs on Longuevue, Marlin, and Mapleton. But our new Finance Director Andrew McCreery suggested adding that to the new $4 million bond issue that the Commission will be voting on this year for a new roof for the municipal building and maintenance for both parking garages. The money from the storm water fee can go toward the storm sewer repairs portion of the bond issue. It is unclear to me why the revenue from parking isn't going toward the parking garages.

The good news is that no money is being spent on deer culling this year. Kristen Linfante was not happy about that decision. Mt. Lebanon OKs $32.82M Budget

I was unable to attend the commission meeting on Tuesday evening, but the video is online here.