A meeting of the Carbon County Tax Collection Committee turned heated Wednesday evening after the proposed bylaws plan, which would give each entity in the group an equal vote, was defeated.

Alan Katz, Penn Forest Township's representative on the committee, presented the group with information prior to the role call vote, stating that they should vote "no" for a weighted vote and "yes" to the proposed bylaws."I don't think you all showed up to be dominated by the four school districts Jim Thorpe, Lehighton, Panther Valley, and Palmerton," he said, noting in a hand out he provided, that the breakdown of the weighted vote is very widespread."Most of you have a fairly small percent of the weighted vote," Katz added. "My recommendation to the bylaws committee is to give each and every one of you an equal vote."Under the current voting system, put in place by the state Department of Community and Economic Development, four out of the five school districts control 46.21 percent of the weighted vote, Katz noted. The remaining 53.79 percent is split between Weatherly School District and the 23 municipalities.When role call was taken, a total of 18 entities voted in favor of the bylaws with the vote change; while only eight voted "no," but because of the weighted vote, the entities Panther Valley, Jim Thorpe, Lehighton, and Palmerton school districts; as well as East Penn Township, Franklin Township, Lehighton, and Mahoning Township that voted against the change were able to defeat the proposal 60.57 percent "no" to 38.73 percent "yes." Lausanne and Lehigh Township were not represented at the meeting.Following the vote, the school districts and municipalities provided reasoning for their vote.Attorney William Schwab, who represents East Penn Township, said, "I polled my board. My board has concerns that this is a lifeline for the township, the earned income tax. It's a large amount of money. We have had issues in the past dealing with some of the smaller municipalities. We don't want to put our future in the hands of the smaller municipalities. We have had much better cooperation with our school districts."He asked, "Why should the near 2,800 residents in East Penn Township have one vote equal to someone whose municipality has 200 people?"Schwab also noted that the larger municipalities have to pay more than the smaller municipalities.Lehighton and Jim Thorpe school district representatives; as well as John Wieczorek of Mahoning Township, echoed Schwab's statement, saying that they also polled their boards prior to the meeting and were following instructions.Gerard Grega of the Weatherly School District, who voted in favor of the equal vote, rebutted the school districts' reasons, saying that the vote should be about equal representation, not about power."What I've heard from the smaller municipalities up until this point is how useless they already felt with being represented on this committee and tonight's vote would have given them more of a vote," he said. "I see this as the school districts being greedy, power hungry. They want to run the entire process."Basically their (the smaller municipalities) worst fears were realized tonight," he added.The weighted vote system is based on a combination of the amount of revenue the municipality or school district collects and its population, in proportion to the revenues collected.For example, Jim Thorpe borough has an earned income tax revenue of $441,980 and has 4,804 residents. That means, based on those two factors, the town's weighted vote is 4.33 percent.Some of the municipalities in attendance, such as East Side Boro, only has an earned income tax revenue of $20,801, and has 290 residents. This means their weighted vote only counted for .23 percent.A second motion was made to then table any action on the bylaws. That motion was defeated when the same eight entities voted against tabling the matter.Following the vote, a third motion was made to adopt the minority bylaws proposal, which include the weighted vote. Some members questioned if the committee was able to vote on another bylaws proposal in the same evening. They said they should be able to take the bylaws back to the committee for revisions.AttorneySchwab said that the committee can proceed with the vote and after some discussion, called for a role call vote.The motion passed with the same eight entities voting in favor of the proposal.Numerous representatives from municipalities left the meeting following the vote because they felt they had lost control and had no say left.