Jim Thorpe Borough officials said Thursday they intend on sending letters to the Carbon County Commissioners and the Reading and Northern Railroad requesting assistance with mounting traffic enforcement costs that they say are straining the municipality’s limited budget.

“The cost of traffic enforcement just continues to increase,” Council President Greg Strubinger said during the borough workshop session.

The borough has received $26,000 in tourism planning and management grant money for fiscal year 2025, but traffic control services, through a renewed contract with BCM Security of Wilkes-Barre, alone are consuming nearly the entire grant allocation.

“Traffic control services come out to just over $24,000,” Councilman Connor Rodgers said. “So that right there takes up almost all of the $26,000. But it’s put to good use and keeps the traffic going. We have to keep the traffic moving and keep the pedestrians out of the way of vehicles.”

The traffic management challenges, Strubinger said, stem partly from directing vehicles that are patronizing the railroad. Officials noted that while the borough benefits from tourism, the associated costs are significant.

“We’ll send letters out asking them to help us handle that,” Strubinger said. “I don’t know that we believe it will happen, but at least we can say we tried.”

Strubinger said it was important to the borough to get the $26,000, which came from hotel tax funding and a Pocono Mountain Vacation Bureau Community Impact grant.

“We wanted to keep that out of the budget so the taxpayers didn’t have to foot the bill,” he said.

Jim Thorpe’s initial agreement with BCM called for five BCM officers and one supervisor.

The latest grant funding will allow the borough to have eight traffic control officers for upcoming events including the Fourth of July, Labor Day, four weekends in October and two in November.

“That at least frees up the police department to do the security measures that are needed down there,” Police Chief Joe Schatz said.

Officials also raised concerns about the sustainability of their current funding sources. Hotel tax revenue, Strubinger said, is not guaranteed long-term funding.

“That could go away or they could allocate it somewhere else,” he said.

Equipment needs are also growing, with aging traffic control devices requiring replacement or upgrades.

“Our devices are getting older,” Schatz said. “We put them out and people strike them. We’re looking at trying to get more modernized devices. And that stuff’s not cheap.”

Schatz said he explained the borough’s financial constraints to local residents at a recent Community Watch meeting.

“They were sort of shocked,” he said, “at the kind of job we all do there with the very limited funding we get.”