Lansford Borough houses its offices above American Fire Co. No 1, housed in an aging building on East Patterson Street.

The cramped office space is home to filing cabinets, a copy machine, computers, three desks and a large, oval library table around which council gathers each fall to sweat out a new annual budget.The zoning office, above the community center on Ridge Street, where public council meetings are held, is just as tight. The narrow, hallway-like space that once housed the police department must now accommodate office equipment, desks and records.In the basement of the building, police keep residents safe, working in a small area crammed with desks and equipment.It's no secret the borough needs a central administrative office, a roomy place that can keep the offices together for better communication and make it easier for residents to access services.So with the budget stretched thin, with no money to buy or build, Lansford is looking for grants and/or corporate largess to turn one of the established buildings in town into Borough Central.Council has revamped its Building Committee into a Facilities Planning Committee, and charged it with exploring options."The borough offices are in sorry need of repairs. We're out of space - there are just a lot of issues," said council president Bob Gaughan after a public meeting Wednesday.The committee has concluded that the "most cost-effective method that we have to remedy the issues is to purchase a facility somewhere in town," he said.Recently, the committee toured three buildings: the former Aquilla Fashions building on the east end of town, and the Dime Bank and the Jet Data building in the center of town."there has not been any commitment or move at this time, other than looking at those properties," Gaughan said. "And quite frankly, unless we can find some significant grant money, we are not going to be doing anything in fiscal 2010."It's really going to rely on us having the ability to find some grant money or potentially, maybe, trying to get …corporations to donate a portion of it for tax deduction. There are a number of different things we're looking at at this point," he said.