Opening public comments and budget concerns were the main topics of discussion at Monday's Slatington Water/Sewer/Highway Workshop Committee meeting.

Three borough residents spoke, including Carol Gildner, who continued a line of questioning about borough grants that she had begun at last week's borough council meeting.Gildner asked specifically where a 2014 grant of $84,000 would be applied and also if liquid fuels money came from Harrisburg and for what purposes it was supposed to be used.The council responded that much of the 2014 grant would go toward road work on East Washington Street, from Second Street eastward.They also said that liquid fuels money comes from gas pump tax and that it can be used only for things related to the streets.Another visitor, former Councilwoman Kris Burek, said her question pertained to an addendum to last week's borough council meeting agenda that noted a pipe repair was needed at the sewer plant.Burek asked why council had decided to go with Rapid Pump and Meter, out of Paterson, N.J., instead of someone local, for the repair.Council President Daniel Stevens said the repair constituted "an emergency situation." The borough has done a lot of business with Rapid Pump and Meter in the past.While discussing water budget expenditures, Water/Special Sewer Committee Chairman Bryon Reed noted that leak detection equipment purchased by the borough for about $9,000 this year has gone a long way in detecting leaks throughout the borough and, thus, has saved the borough on both water filtration plant chemical costs and electric costs."With finding that leak, there's five hours less run time (per day)," Reed noted. He said that $44,000 had been budgeted in 2011 but that the borough's bids for electric since then have also dropped from 10 cents to 6.8 cents per kilowatt hour."So between that and the run time, I dropped that $39,000 we had budgeted (last year) down to $27,000," Reed added. "So that's money we could put somewhere else."After the meeting, Reed explained that the borough had so far this year saved about $7,000 on electric because the leak detection equipment had discovered various leaks throughout the borough, including a major one on Main Street.Another expenditure Reed noted was needed, stemming from routine maintenance, is a roof repair on one of the reservoirs that could cost upward of $10,000.