Capital infrastructure maintenance and improvement is the No. 1 priority for more than 21 percent of Pennsylvania municipal governments, according to the Municipal Management Priorities Survey prepared for the Chrostwaite Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on research and government efficiency.
After infrastructure, the next four priorities were obtaining grants and intergovernmental revenues, stormwater management, community development, and blight prevention and remediation.
The goal of the survey was to determine which issues are most important for municipalities. Priorities also were compared and contrasted between cities, boroughs, and townships.
Blight prevention and remediation is one issue that ranked differently based on community type. For cities, 58 percent rated blight prevention and remediation as a top priority, but only 26 percent of boroughs, 10 percent of first-class townships and 5 percent of second-class townships did.
Pension costs also ranked differently. A total of 37.5 percent of cities listed pension costs as a top priority while the issue ranked low for other community types.
The survey was sent in 2017 to 1,058 municipalities with a population of more than 2,500 residents including 599 second-class townships, 322 boroughs, 83 first-class townships, 53 third-class cities, and one town. Sixty percent of the municipalities returned the survey.