By Winthrop Rodgers
Contributing Writer

With a new year now just a few weeks away, the leadership of Kennett Square Borough is looking to the future. As the current council’s work wraps up and a new group will take office, the borough is confronting a range of challenges, including ensuring its fiscal stability and focusing on affordability. Meeting the needs of a growing and changing community over the long term will be a major task of the next council.

“Kennett Square acts as the downtown for many of the surrounding communities,” Borough Council President Bob Norris told the Chester County Press in an interview at Liberty Market on State Street. “We take on that honor, but also the responsibility and cost to do that as well.”

Norris said that fiscal security was the number one priority of the borough, arguing that it was on firmer ground than it had been in the past. The borough had avoided tax increases for a number of years by using refinancing and by pushing costs down the line to make the budget work.

While this was politically palatable, it was causing problems with the budget long term and putting services at risk.

“How do we maintain the level of service [and] not kill our residents with taxes that are so onerous…It's a balloon. Tell me where you want to squeeze and you're going to have to deal with the consequences somewhere else,” Norris explained.

“There's been an awful lot of deferred maintenance, and especially on a pretty and old town like Kennett Square. And those are the expenses, the costs that are so easy to push back,” he added.

In 2022, the council began to raise taxes in order to make sure that the revenue was in place to serve residents now and in the future. Between 2022 and 2023, there was an increase of 52%, with an increase of 12% the following year. With that catch-up work done, taxes for the Borough are proposed to rise 3% next year, with similar increases expected in the future to keep pace with inflation and growth.

“We've worked hard to make sure that we're looking not just at the current fiscal year budget, but also sort of the longer-term future, especially as it pertains to capital investments or reinvestments,” Norris said.

Another way that the borough has worked to make its budget sustainable is by applying for grant money from county, state, and federal sources. In fact, Kennett Square now brings in more funds from grants than it does from property tax.

Norris praised the current council’s attitude toward the budget and its ability to co-operate as “a really good working group” to balance current and future needs.

“It's easy to spend money on current programs, especially when you’re an elected official. It's a lot harder to say, ‘Hey, let me think about beyond my term,’” he said.

What makes this particularly challenging is the diverse and growing nature of Kennett’s population. There are several distinct groups with different expectations, levels of influence, and needs.

Primarily, these groups consist of residents whose families have been in Kennett Square for generations, recent arrivals from larger urban areas who come for the schools and pace of life, and the large immigrant population who work in agriculture.

“I think the diversity is a really beautiful part of the community and I think the vast majority of people take it on,” Norris said. “They're proud of that. It’s about how we make sure that the economics work for those groups. They bring much different perspectives to what Kennett Square is, was, and should be.”

However, affordability and housing are a common concern across all three demographics.

For long-time residents, rising housing prices mean that they do well when they decide to sell their homes, but face higher property taxes in the meantime. The new imports are facing tough competition for limited housing options amid rising prices, which make it difficult for them to move to the area. The immigrants, upon whom the local economy is highly dependent, are often priced out of the housing market altogether.

Addressing this challenge will be a major priority for the next council, with decisions about the NVF site and other developments around the borough needing to be made. Norris said that the borough called for a significant number of affordable units for the redeveloped NVF site.

This issue came up at the “Conversation with the Candidates” at the Kennett Square Library on October 23 featuring mayoral hopefuls Matt Fetick and Leon Spencer. During the event, which was organized by the Chester County Press, incumbent Mayor Fetick said the borough was using its leverage and told developers that they would not support their planning application if affordable units were not included.

“We can’t take their word for it,” Fetick said.

In addition to the NVF site, the borough needs to solidify the economic future of State Street and the downtown area.

“What does State Street, 2.0 look like?” Norris asked, noting that, while the area is a major asset for the borough, there are a few areas of concern.

Most notably, the council hopes to ensure full occupancy of the Genesis building and Franklin Center, which remain largely empty in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bringing in new tenants will provide nearby businesses with reliable foot traffic and other economic benefits. Talks with interested parties are progressing, the council president reported.

The borough also wants to use its own premises to bolster community involvement. It plans to convert parts of the municipal building into condos and sell them to local non-profits as office space to support their work in Kennett Square.

“It's an enormous project. It's a $10 million project,” Norris said. “We've put it out to bid — the two outer buildings as well as some of the main building — and are hoping that community-facing organizations go in into the process.”

Norris said that he is confident that the new council will continue the current group’s efforts to move Kennett Square forward and ensure a financially stable borough that tries to balance the needs of its diverse population.

“When I ask folks, ‘why is it special?’ It is because it is a small town, but there's this really strong sense of community and neighborhood,” Norris said, “which is hokey, but it is also beautiful.”