- The leaders of two Clearfield County municipalities are finalizing efforts to form the first new city in Pennsylvania since 1994. In less than a month, the City of DuBois and Sandy Township will consolidate into what will still be called “The City of DuBois.” WPSU’s Sydney Roach talked with Ben Kafferlin, one of the interim city managers in DuBois, about the process leading up to this moment – and what comes next.
This is the full conversation, lightly edited for clarity. A shorter version will air on WPSU-FM.
- Sydney Roach
Ben Kafferlin, thanks for talking with me.
Ben Kafferlin
Thank you.Sydney Roach
Why are these municipalities consolidating?Ben Kafferlin
First of all, the city of DuBois and Sandy Township have tried several times over recent decades to consolidate for the benefits of consolidation, namely that of efficiency. Two similar-sized governments, two kind of similar-sized communities, that could just benefit from the efficiency of lesser overhead, and a kind of unified vision and unified leadership structure, I suppose.- The vote was finally taken in 2021, and, the voters confirmed it, narrowly. And I think that there was this sense that, you know, that efficiency was going to be monumental, and I think that some hopes have probably been broken in that they were expecting a big, I don't know, wedding day or something. And kind of what's happened instead is that they have, over the last few years, consolidated positions and such, and are already gaining from the efficiency.
And so, one of the challenges that we're working through right now is that the budget for 2026 actually has a tax increase in it. And so people are saying, "Wait a minute. This whole thing was supposed to save money." My counter is that it already has saved money, and that the main reason for the increase is because of rising costs and such that they haven't had to pay yet because of the efficiency that have been gained over recent years.
Sydney Roach
How much is the tax increase?Ben Kafferlin
It's going to be about 5 mills. But that's not really helpful for you in terms of, you know, "What does that mean?" Essentially, on the local municipal property tax, it's going up for parts of the community 25% and closer to 50% for others.Which is, of course, very significant, but when you consider the fact that those communities have not raised their taxes in some 15 years, and you think about inflation over all of those, you know, that period of time, particularly through the COVID years, the buying power of their millage has not kept up with inflation at all.
Sydney Roach
Yeah, we've actually been doing a lot of stories about municipalities that have been raising their taxes, and I know for State College, part of the reason is because they had been relying on COVID relief funds, and, you know, that's running out now.Ben Kafferlin
That story is everywhere.
Property owners in State College will have to pay more in taxes next year, although the increase won’t be as high as what council members previously proposed.Sydney Roach
So, you're coming into this consolidation with something of an outsider's perspective. You're part of an interim management team with Lisa Hagberg, both working under the Kafferlin Strategies Consulting Company. Could you briefly talk about what your company does, and if you think having an outsider's view has been helpful in this process?Ben Kafferlin
Yes, I definitely believe that it's been helpful, for at least two reasons. Number one is this community has had a lot of turmoil recently with the indictment of their former manager, and just the consternation over the consolidation itself. And so, having an outsider that's, you know, we're from a small town, a similar-sized city in Warren, Pennsylvania, so we kind of come at it from a similar perspective, but not with all the baggage, right? And so we've been able to be pretty objective.- The other reason that it's been helpful to have us come in is because, with a management team, you bring a lot of different perspectives. So my partner, Lisa, knows a lot about collective bargaining and finance. I tend to, do more of management and legal work. We've got a guy on our team who does pensions, one that does municipal planning code work. And so when you bring the whole team together, it brings the expertise of, like, a dozen people to the table, rather than, you know, just something that only one person could bring. So I think the community benefits from that.
- To answer your question about what our firm does is we want to see small-town Pennsylvania flourish, and so everyone in our company is motivated and called to work in the public sphere and love our neighbors through helping their small local governments flourish. So we do things like interim management, strategic planning and all kinds of leadership coaching and trainings.
Sydney Roach
So, you already kind of mentioned what I wanted to ask next is, you know, it is hard to talk about DuBois' government without addressing the elephant in the room, that being the ongoing embezzlement investigation into former City Manager Herm Suplizio. As you know, those allegations led to widespread public outcry, increased scrutiny on government spending, and the stalling of this consolidation. My question is, what steps have you taken to increase transparency, and do you feel like they've helped ease people's concerns?Ben Kafferlin
I'm not sure if people's concerns are alleviated, but if I could point to one thing…When we came a year ago, the public meetings were very well attended, and there was a lot of angry people there on both sides of the issue. And if you look at recent months, that's really been tamed. I don't necessarily like this, but there's not a lot of people that are coming anymore. But one thing I do appreciate is they're not angry.For the most part, I think the community is at least resigned to the fact that consolidation is happening, right? And that, at this point, any, previous faults of administration are going to be handled by the courts, so it's kind of out of our hands. So I do look at that as a good sign that things are heading in the right direction.
In Herm Suplizio’s quest to make DuBois, Pa., a destination, state prosecutors allege that he lined his own pockets with hundreds of thousands of public and nonprofit dollars.Sydney Roach
Pennsylvania's municipal election was last month, which gave DuBois and Sandy Township residents the chance to vote for their newly formed city council, but I noticed there was nobody on the ballot for treasurer, so who's gonna end up serving in that role? Has that been decided yet?Ben Kafferlin
Yeah, last minute, a gentleman decided to run a writing campaign, and got well over the sufficient number of votes to win the treasurer's position, and so there are no vacancies. We have all seven council members, the controller and the treasurer all locked up.Sydney Roach
Who is the treasurer?Ben Kafferlin
David Rupprecht.Sydney Roach
As we're talking, the official date for consolidation is less than a month away on January 5. Are the two municipalities ready? What, if anything, still needs to happen?Ben Kafferlin
I think we're about as ready as we can be. There are a lot of things that we'd hoped to get done before the end of the year that are not going to get done, but we also had to kind of triage things. The most important critical legal matters are handled.- We have all of the assignment and assumption agreements and bills of sale, and all the legal stuff that has to happen ready to go. We have the appointments that need to be made, and the agendas built.
- The financial system is probably the one thing that we are a little behind in. And more or less, that came down to we couldn't get started on creating bank accounts, and setting them up in the system until the IRS gave us a letter, the EIN number. We didn't get the EIN number because the federal government was shut down. And so, it's funny how the ripple-down effect of the federal government being shut down ended up causing us to be basically delayed in setting up the fiscal system, but that is the big push right now, making sure that we get all those accounts in there and the new new accounts uploaded correctly, and, you know, we're ready to hit play in the new year.
Payroll system is another thing that we're working kind of feverishly to get up and going, but, you know, those are all very workable problems. And then in the new year, the real work will begin with writing standard operating procedures and training everyone to the new systems and that kind of thing.
Sydney Roach
We kind of touched on this earlier, about other municipalities that have been, having to raise their taxes. So, we're seeing so many small towns struggling to survive. Do you think consolidating is the answer? Can we expect to see more consolidations?- Ben Kafferlin
The ongoing consolidation between DuBois and Sandy Township is only the second one in Pennsylvania after lawmakers standardized the process. It has shown the limits of state law.
I do think that mergers and consolidations could be part of the answer. There is strength and efficiency in doing it. - As a general caution, I would just say to any community that's considering it, that a merger is much less costly than a consolidation. So to any community leader that's thinking, you know, we get along great with our next-door neighbor, maybe we could just merge. The reason to do the consolidation is essentially, one of pride, because the two communities cease to exist and create one new community. So it's very equal.
- A merger is where you have one entity that absorbs the other. And I would suggest that that's far cheaper, because you don't have to go through all the registration process and the sale of assets and that kind of thing. It's just so much quicker and easier to handle. You don't need nearly as much legal and expertise to make it happen. So, if you're thinking about it, I know people in our firm would love to communicate about it, we'd be happy to advise, but just a general point, go with a merger, not a consolidation.
Sydney Roach
If it's easier and cheaper, then why didn't DuBois merge instead of consolidate?Ben Kafferlin
I think, you know, I've asked some of the people that were motivated to see the consolidation happen, and I think it really came down to they recognized that the City of Dubois' name was something that they thought they should keep, but Sandy Township is, in many ways, twice the size of the city of DuBois. And so it felt kind of weird to merge into the city, since the city was the smaller entity, and I think they wanted a sense of equality of them both going into it together, rather than, you know… all these assets of Sandy Township just kind of merging into the existing city.Sydney Roach
Ben Kafferlin, thank you so much for talking with me.Ben Kafferlin
You're very welcome. Thank you.
