Weatherly Borough Council on Tuesday approved reopening its budget for 2026.

The $7.8 million spending plan called for increased utility rates for water, sewer and electricity to support higher acquisition costs and infrastructure upgrades.

Last year, Harold Pudliner, now retired borough manager, told residents that the borough is paying more for electricity due to increases in the RPM, or reliability pricing model.

The RPM is a system that accounts for securing additional electricity sources during peak heating and cooling seasons. The rate, set by auction each year, has gone up due to fewer generating sources coming online, Pudliner had explained.

The borough also needs money to fund infrastructure updates to its aging water and sewer systems, which are starting to fail.

Before Christmas, the borough sought parts for its sewer operating system, which was new 28 years ago but now is obsolete, Pudliner had said.

He had also pointed the need to replace water mains and pumps, as well as upgrade wells, in the borough’s water system.

This past weekend, the borough issued a water emergency asking residents to conserve water as the west side of the borough was without service.

A water buffalo was brought into Eurana Park for residents, and a boil advisory issued for the west side of town when the system began to stabilize and rebound. The borough crew were still trying to isolate leaks Tuesday night and Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a resident asked how much of the 20% increase for water in the 2026 budget was going toward these needed infrastructure upgrades.

Current Borough Manager Tracy Grover explained that the increased rates are being used to cover ongoing repairs and maintenance of the system, which have been adding up.

“Right now, we’re just trying to cover the cost for what we have been band-aiding for quite a while,” she said. “It’s an ongoing process of something breaking, something having to be fixed.

“It’s at the point where we have been band-aiding things for so long, we need the money to fix it,” Grover said.

The borough is also negotiating a contract with, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a newly formed union for borough employees, and the exact costs were unclear when the preliminary budget was adopted last year.

Council had hoped that it would have a better idea of those costs going into the new year and could incorporate that into a reopened budget.

Council is allowed to reopen the budget in a year following a municipal election. A final budget must be approved by Feb. 15.

On Tuesday, council also approved a resolution for a tax anticipation note of $125,000 from Mauch Chunk Trust to help fund the borough until tax revenues begin to flow in the spring.