Tag Archives: audit committee

Committee Commitment: Harrisburg community members work long hours, for no pay, on important city boards and commissions. What motivates these volunteers?

November 30, 2022 | by Maddie Gittens

Ausha Green

When Ausha Green first joined the Harrisburg Planning Commission in 2015, she questioned whether she belonged.

“Everyone here is either an engineer or architect, and I’m just a community member,” she remembered thinking.

Although Green, now City Council vice president, had served on the Harrisburg School District’s board of directors, the planning commission was much different and, admittedly, she had no idea what the planning commission did. But, always eager to serve the city she was born and raised in, she jumped right in.

Getting up to speed on the functions of the board, which reviews construction and development proposals, took many months. Fortunately, her fellow commission members eagerly provided guidance along the way.

Seven years later and Green is still serving, even though her term has expired. She plans to stay on until her seat is eventually reappointed. Green views a big part of her role as making sure that proposed projects don’t negatively impact her community and its residents.

“I think I bring a different perspective to the board, which I think is important,” she said. “I’ve learned so much being on the board. It’s been a joy to serve.”

Green is just one of many local community members who choose to volunteer their time to serve on the city’s various boards, committees and commissions. Most of the time, these boards go unnoticed, flying under the radar though vital to the city’s functions and to its future.

Besides the planning commission, there are over 25 boards listed on Harrisburg’s website, although some are likely defunct or not meeting regularly. Among the more active groups are the Zoning Hearing Board, the Historic Architectural Review Board (HARB) and the Harrisburg Redevelopment Authority board.

Members of the city’s boards are most often appointed by City Council or the mayor’s office and usually are chosen based off a relevant expertise, skill or passion. While board members don’t get paid, let alone get many thanks for their dedication, most do it gladly and, like Green, have even served past their original terms.

“The best way to make a change in your community is to be a part of it,” Green said.

Alex Reber

Reflect the City

Alex Reber not only serves on one board, but three. For the past eight years, he has sat on the audit committee and, for about a year, on the redevelopment authority board and the Harrisburg Land Bank.

He was asked to join the audit committee since he is licensed as a certified public accountant, as the committee is required to have one such professional. The board, he said, chooses and hires auditors, making the selection process more independent of the city. They also review the audits. It’s a way to keep checks and balances during the city’s financial reporting process, he explained.

Those meetings usually take place quarterly, but, with only two members on what should be a five-person board, the group hasn’t really been able to conduct business.

Similarly, on the redevelopment authority’s board, only three out of five seats are filled.

Having vacant seats or members with expired terms are problems across several of the city’s boards and commissions. Mayor Wanda Williams has recently moved to fill seats on a few boards, including the Capital Region Water (CRW) board, zoning board and LERTA Appeals Board. City Council has not yet voted on the CRW board appointments, but the zoning and LERTA board appointees have filled their seats.

Reber hopes that, as seats are filled, boards will become more diverse. He encouraged city residents who have skills or passions related to any of the boards to reach out to city staff and officials. Some boards require city residency, while others may only require that members work or own property in Harrisburg.

“It’s important that these boards reflect the city,” he said.

Reber more recently joined the redevelopment authority’s board, which works on revitalization and housing development, out of his passion to help increase and improve affordable housing in the city.

“It’s exciting to be a part of trying to work to accomplish that goal,” he said. “I find it really fulfilling.”

Trina Gribble

Like Reber, HARB chair Trina Gribble decided to serve out of a passion and skillset. With her background in architecture and experience on the Historic Harrisburg Association’s preservation committee, she decided to join HARB after she was asked by the previous mayor.

Gribble views her role on the board as helping to maintain and preserve Harrisburg’s historic streetscape and “unique identity,” she said. The board does this through examining and voting on proposed building projects within Harrisburg’s historic districts.

“I play a little role in helping to keep that urban fabric together,” she said.

Leading from Behind

For most volunteers who serve on Harrisburg’s boards and commissions, their willingness to dedicate hours every month comes from their love for the city.

Capital Region Water board Chair Marc Kurowski draws inspiration from a program he attended through Leadership Harrisburg Area, an organization that teaches servant leadership and community service.

“You’re leading from behind, doing it in no way to further yourself, but to do it for the greater good,” Kurowski said.

He has served on the board since 2008, lending his skillset as a civil engineer. Even with his professional background, Kurowski said that it took him about three years on the board to wrap his head around all that CRW does. The board makes decisions around policy, conducts community outreach, and votes on changes to water and sewer rates, among other functions.

Marc Kurowski

Over the years he’s served, CRW has made strides in diverse hiring practices, in controlling costs, in hiring quality top officials and, recently, in finalizing an agreement to reduce contaminated stormwater runoff, he said.

Like some other city board members, Kurowski’s term has expired, but he continues to serve until reappointed or replaced, he said.

“I enjoy being able to be part of a bigger thing that can be beneficial to a community,” he said.

According to Green, she was raised to understand the importance of volunteering. Her mom was always serving in the community and runs a food pantry, which Green and her siblings volunteer at regularly. Her mom’s example is what has inspired her to be civic-minded.

The same goes for Reber, who was also taught at a young age to give back.

“It’s important that, if you have a skillset, to give back to the community,” he said. “Anything I can do to help, I want to do.”

For more information on Harrisburg’s boards and commissions, visit www.harrisburgpa.gov/boards-commissions.

If you like what we do, please support our work. Become a Friend of TheBurg!

In Harrisburg Recovery, Fairness Remains Matter of Debate at City Hall

October 9, 2015 | by Paul Barker

Finance director Bruce Weber, left, and Act 47 coordinator Fred Reddig at a Harrisburg City Council meeting in August.

It was a raw deal, paying off reckless financiers out of the pockets of the common man. Or it was a fair shake, calling for shared pain on the road to stability. Or it was a best bet after years of acrimony, and a hedge against bankruptcy’s unknowns.

These are competing views of the Harrisburg Strong Plan, the 2013 blueprint for Harrisburg’s financial recovery. And two years in, they are still held, and vigorously debated, by the city’s top officials.

Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, who supported the plan as a “window of opportunity” during his campaign for office, said in an annual address in September that it wasn’t producing enough revenue and should be revised.

And as recently as Thursday night, during a meeting of the city’s audit committee, Harrisburg’s controller, top lawyer and state overseer aired fundamental disagreements about the fiscal plan’s merits and fairness.

“When I look at this plan, I don’t see anybody caring about me, Vince, Alex, any of these guys,” said Controller Charlie DeBrunner, referring to audit committee members Vince Fogarty and Alex Reber. “And I would really like somebody, when they sit down at the next plan, to go through the plan and say, ‘What do we need to live here?’”

DeBrunner’s remarks came nearly an hour into a meeting that, up til that point, had been focused on the city’s annual audit, which was completed in a timely fashion—though still not as early as some would like—for the first time since 2008.

They were prompted, DeBrunner said, by the city’s recent request that residents bag their own leaves to assist a short-staffed public works department. That request, which might appear minor in itself, nevertheless hinted at the long shadow of Harrisburg’s financial collapse, felt in high taxes and inadequate city services.

“I think I’ve contributed my fair share—what I pay to park, my taxes,” DeBrunner said. “And now the city wants me to rake my own leaves, because they don’t have the money.”

Harrisburg’s recovery plan, drafted in a period of intense state oversight, was ultimately the state’s bid—vetted by local officials and a state court—to work out a deal between the city and its creditors that could avert bankruptcy.

It paid off hundreds of millions in debt, and restructured tens of millions in other obligations, in part with concessions from the city’s creditors. But it came at a bitter cost to residents, whose local income taxes and parking rates and fines doubled.

That has left residents like DeBrunner angry at the prospect of paying more for less. “We’re a relatively calm and decent people, frustrated beyond belief,” he said of neighbors unhappy at the prospect of bagging leaves in his tree-lined neighborhood. “Somebody needs to begin to consider the quality of lives we’re living in the city.”

And it has left many asking, again, whether the city’s creditors, like bond insurers Ambac and Assured Guaranty Municipal, have taken their fair share of the pain.

“They invested here,” DeBrunner said. “It seems to me, as an investor myself, I have to assume some risk sometimes when I invest. And I don’t see any of that.”

Yet others, like Fred Reddig of the state Department of Community and Economic Development, the coordinator overseeing the city’s recovery plan, point to the sacrifices it required from creditors. Soon after DeBrunner spoke, Reddig, who was at Thursday’s meeting to present a quarterly progress report, weighed in.

“The creditors already have shouldered a portion of the responsibility,” he said. He cited the $36 million carved out of the state’s debt fix—a long-term lease of city parking, largely backed by the boosted rates and fines—and set aside to pay city bills and fund some infrastructure improvements and employee retirement benefits.

“If you look at Rhode Island,” Reddig added, referring to a 2012 bankruptcy fix for that state’s tiny city of Central Falls, “their state gave creditors deference over everybody else. I disagree with that, but that’s what they did.”

“Well, it feels like that’s what’s happened here, Fred,” DeBrunner interrupted. “I live here. I’m not looking at this as a consultant on the outside.”

At the reference to bankruptcy, city solicitor Neil Grover chimed in with a reminder about the Pennsylvania Constitution. Under one interpretation of state law, he said, government promises to bondholders are sacrosanct, and bankruptcy amounted to a gamble over whether state law or federal bankruptcy code would prevail.

“No one has tested that,” Grover said. “Anyone that tells you they can predict what the other side of it is is kidding you.”

In that context, the recovery plan was its own kind of bet—namely, that negotiating some amount of shared pain from creditors was better than risking a judicial decision that the city must pay creditors every dime it owed them.

The discussion reached at least one point of accord, with all three agreeing the city ultimately needed more taxpayers. But a discouraged DeBrunner noted it would be hard to attract them when taxes were so high and services so hard to provide.

After a few minutes, Reddig returned to his quarterly report, and the audit committee went back to its business. The debate over the recovery plan’s legacy, in that room as elsewhere in the city, was left unresolved.

Tag Archives: audit committee

Committee Commitment: Harrisburg community members work long hours, for no pay, on important city boards and commissions. What motivates these volunteers?

You May Also Like

Knead Pizza to reopen Midtown shop, nearly two years after unionization controversy

Harrisburg School District slated to purchase new administration building amidst building reconfiguration

Market Street Bridge to close for two nights next month as rehab project moves forward

Harrisburg to celebrate Bike Month in May with cycling events, Ride of Silence