PCTV contributing to general fund, not draining it

Monday, December 8, 2008 7:44 AM EST

POTTSTOWN — As it turns out, PCTV is not losing money after all.When Assistant Borough Manager Jason Bobst and Timothea Kirchner, a financial consultant and interim finance director, began putting together the 2009 budget, one of the areas they found worrisome was a capital item to borrow money for, among other things, $300,000 worth of new equipment for PCTV.According to the audits from 2006 and 2007, Kirchner told council Dec. 3, PCTV had been running a deficit.But after meeting with PCTV chief Mark Pollock, she came to realize that at least until 2007, it was the other way around, and that it was PCTV that was helping to prop up the general fund.

"We keep peeling back the layers of the onion," Kirchner said.Beneath the outer layer, in which PCTV was going to require an infusion of cash from the general fund in 2009, Kirchner said she found that in 2004, council had transferred $150,000 into the general fund. In 2005, it was $200,000. In 2006, it went up to $250,000 and in 2007, it was $175,000."Essentially, over many years the general fund was drawing out of this enterprise to balance the budget," Kirchner said."Think of it, over eight years, PCTV has put over $2 million into the borough's general fund and we haven't cost the borough one penny to operate," Pollock told The Mercury.As a consequence of this deeper investigation, Kirchner said Pollock had re-submitted his budget, particularly given the drop in advertising dollars that have occurred as a result of the recession."But has also reduced his expenditures significantly," she said.As a result, the $63,000 that had once been penciled in as the general fund's contribution to PCTV has been eliminated from the budget proposal, Kirchner said.
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