State Sen. John Yudichak speaks at the Plymouth Township Municipal Building on Monday to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the township exiting Act 47 status.
                                 Kevin Carroll | Times Leader

State Sen. John Yudichak speaks at the Plymouth Township Municipal Building on Monday to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the township exiting Act 47 status.

Kevin Carroll | Times Leader

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<p>State Sen. John Yudichak (standing) addresses the Plymouth Township Board of Supervisors. From left, sitting: Joseph Yudichak, chairwoman Gale Conrad, and Jim Murphy.</p>
                                 <p>Kevin Carroll | Times Leader</p>

State Sen. John Yudichak (standing) addresses the Plymouth Township Board of Supervisors. From left, sitting: Joseph Yudichak, chairwoman Gale Conrad, and Jim Murphy.

Kevin Carroll | Times Leader

PLYMOUTH TWP. — With some help from state Sen. John Yudichak – a township native – the Plymouth Township Board of Supervisors held a small ceremony on Monday to celebrate the township’s five-year anniversary of the day it officially exited Act 47 status.

Supervisors Jim Murphy, Joseph Yudichak and Chairwoman Gale Conrad welcomed the state senator, as well as officials from the NEPA Alliance and the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) and residents of Plymouth Township to celebrate the occasion.

“At one point, we were in debt to the tune of nearly a million dollars,” Conrad said in her opening remarks. “Today, not only are we out of debt, but we have a surplus, and we haven’t raised property taxes in 18 years.”

Act 47, formally known as the Financially Distressed Municipalities Act, is a state statute authorizing the DCED to go in and help municipalities that have been designated as “financially distressed.”

Plymouth Township was officially designated as an Act 47 municipality on July 27, 2004, and exited the designation on May 3, 2016.

Conrad, who came onto the Board of Supervisors in 2002 and has been one of the driving forces behind the township’s recovery, talked at length about just how dire the situation was.

“In 2002, I had an officer call me and say ‘we have a problem, I can’t get gas,’” Conrad said. “Our credit had been cut off at the station where we had an account.”

Conrad gave the officer money out of her own pocket to put gas in the township’s two police cruisers, but it was a startling realization as to how much trouble the township was in.

“It was chaos, once we found out how bad things were,” Conrad said. “I don’t ever want to go back there. … It’s too damn hard.”

Sen. Yudichak, who spoke after Conrad, referred to her as the “matriarch” of the community and of the efforts to get out of Act 47.

“Gale has been here since the very beginning,” Yudichak said. “You’ve kept it all together all these years.”

Yudichak expressed his admiration and pride for his hometown, both for its fiscal responsibility over the year after the Act 47 designation and for continuing to care for and do right by its residents.

One big point made by just about everyone in attendance Monday night: When faced with the possibility of raising property taxes in order to dig out from some of the debt, Conrad and the Board of Supervisors elected not to.

“I’m not sure if this is the exact right number, but I remember that we would have to raise the property tax something like 289%,” Conrad said. “We didn’t want to see hard-working residents lose their homes because they couldn’t afford the taxes.”

Other speakers included Steve Grzymski, who read a letter on behalf of state Rep. Gerald Mullery, Jim Rose from the DCED and Jeffrey Box, the president and CEO of NEPA Alliance.

“When we came here, we found a big problem,” Rose said. “But the township did a remarkable job managing the financials and doing what needed to be done.”

Conrad made mention of a sign hanging in the entrance way to the Plymouth Township Municipal Building with an inscription that summed up the situation pretty succinctly.

“The sign says ‘alone we could do so little, together we could do a lot’,” Conrad said. “We couldn’t get through this without our residents, who were extremely strong and supportive through all of this.

“I can’t thank you all enough.”