During a special meeting held on Thursday, Bowmanstown Borough started to discuss the 2016 budget. The three main points of discussion were the maintenance expenses for the streets department and equipment, the need for funding the compost facility, and the addition of a full-time public works employee.

The maintenance was increased from $2,500 to $3,200 and placed collectively in one budget line item.Treasurer Tara Takerer told council that the line item would still be broken down to track individual expense items to see if a particular piece of equipment would be abnormally high regarding maintenance costs. Currently it is broken up into three separate line items.The discussion regarding the compost facility focused on the purchasing a chipper or renting a machine to perform the duties, as well as the need to rent and schedule a leaf vacuum vehicle.It was preliminarily decided to budget for renting a shredder/chipper machine twice a year, as well as keeping figures in the budget for renting a leaf vacuum vehicle.The issue that broke out the most discussion was the addition of a second full-time employee in the public works department. Currently, the borough employs one full-time and two part-time employees in the streets department.The budget committee recommended that the borough streets department for 2016 should have two full-time employees and one part-time employee. Concerns both for and against this change were voiced.Council member Darren Thomas was in favor this change, for the simple fact that "it is difficult to mandate a part-time employee to come to work during off-hours for needed services like snowplowing."Council President Kara Scott said the department currently had three employees and "things seemed to be working well." There was no official direction to the budget committee during this meeting.In other borough matters, the leaf collection dates for October have been changed to Oct. 26 and 27. In addition, a resolution was passed unanimously to sell the 1989 GMC vehicle currently assigned to the streets department for a price equivalent to junk rates, which is under $1,000.