Wyomissing Adopts Berkshire Mall Overlay, Lists $538K Cuts

Wyomissing Borough Council adopted the rewrite of the zoning overlay that covers the Berkshire Mall at its Nov. 10 meeting, according to a press release the borough posted that night. The same meeting's slide deck, posted Wednesday afternoon, carries a new list of 2027 budget cuts totaling $538,263 and keeps the 4-mill tax increase that would add $578 a year on the median home. What the borough has not posted is any record of the votes on the budget: no minutes, no vote tally and no signed ordinance. The only account of those votes is the borough's video of the meeting, which this story does not summarize.

For residents, the overlay vote means that, if the release is right, the rules for rebuilding the mall site are now set, before any developer has filed a plan; the ordinance takes effect "at the earliest date permitted by law" (packet, p. 7), and no enactment record is posted. The budget is still a draft. The borough's calendar puts a town hall on Dec. 2 and the final adoption vote on Dec. 15, and the tax rate is not law until council passes the tax ordinance.

What council adopted

An overlay district is a second set of zoning rules laid over the regular district; an owner can build under either. The release says council "voted to adopt revisions to its zoning ordinance modifying the C2 Overlay District to support the revitalization of aging commercial properties, including the Berkshire Mall area" (p. 1). Council President Kristen Gajewski is quoted: "Rather than waiting for a specific proposal, Borough officials have taken a proactive approach by evaluating and identifying ways to modernize development standards" (p. 1). The release says the borough "is exploring options to attract developers to this land," and that any future proposal "would be subject to the Borough's established review process, including public meetings, development reviews, and additional opportunities for public input" (p. 2).

The release does not give the vote count, does not name the ordinance by number, and does not mention the two landscaping ordinances, 1465-2026 and 1466-2026, that the agenda set for hearings and votes the same night (p. 2). The ordinance the agenda calls 1464-2026 is the one in the packet (pp. 6-30): it repeals the Commercial and Industrial Redevelopment Overlay District in Part 5-A of the zoning code, restates it from scratch and redraws the boundary to take in "the entirety of the properties identified on Exhibit 'B'" (p. 7). The packet's copy is marked draft, with the enactment date and signature lines blank (pp. 7-8). The borough's overlay web page, which still describes "the proposed Redevelopment Overlay District," now links a clean 25-page copy of Ordinance 1464-2026 without the draft watermark, created Nov. 10 at 2:29 p.m. by the file's own data; its text matches the packet draft line for line, and its enactment date and signatures are blank too (pp. 2-3). Our preview lays out what the ordinance allows: big-box stores, grocers, gas stations, hotels and apartments above shops by right, on sites of one acre or more, at up to 75 feet, with every project routed through a single Master Redevelopment Plan that council approves. Whether council changed any of that text before voting is not on the record either.

The release lists a press contact at kateco.com (p. 1), the domain of Kate & Co., the communications firm whose cost council debated Nov. 3, by the draft minutes (p. 66). BCTV published the release Nov. 12 under the credit "From Wyomissing Borough."

The new cut list

The deck's "New Proposed Cuts" slide (p. 7) lists six lines and a total of $538,263 in "2027 budget savings":

• Communications, $12,000
• Stonehill Ratliff administrative fee, $12,000 (Stonehill Ratliff is the interim manager's firm, as our budget preview reported from the budget tables)
• All consultant cuts, 5 percent, $42,010
• Staffing changes, "Accounts Receivable, Receptionist, Recreation Director," $231,253
• Events and supplies, $75,000
• Re-allocation of expenses to utilities, $166,000

The six lines add to the total, though the slide prints the $166,000 as a positive figure, without the parentheses the other five lines carry, and counts it in the total anyway. The slide does not say which events or supplies are cut, or which utility funds take on the $166,000. Two figures differ from the budget message posted Nov. 9 (page cites are the message's printed page numbers; printed p. 11 is the PDF's 12th page): the message said the finance team "identified $100,000 in eligible expenses that was reallocated to the Borough's utility operations" and put the whole package at "an approximately $500,000 positive impact on the General Fund" (printed p. 11). The message also counted limiting the Deputy Fire Chief to six months of funding among the reductions and listed no events line (printed p. 11); the slide has an events line and no fire chief line. Neither document reconciles the two lists.

The documents also do not show whether the $538,263 changes the budget at all. The totals on the deck's next two slides, $16,472,100 in revenue, $15,983,316 in expenses, a $488,784 surplus and a $2,828,290.83 year-end balance (pp. 8-9), are the same figures the Nov. 9 message carried: the surplus and a $2,828,291 balance in its narrative (printed p. 12), and the revenue and expense totals in its tables, as our budget preview reported. Either the cuts were already inside the Nov. 9 tables under other labels, or their effect is not reflected in the totals on the next slide; nothing posted says which.

The list reads differently from the one council fought over Nov. 3. That slide totaled $251,935 and named the Memorial Day parade, the summer concerts, movies in the park, the Egg Hunt, Touch a Truck, ice skating, $75,000 in leaf collection and $90,000 in pool and playground fee increases (slide 9), as our cut-list story reported. None of those items appears by name on the Nov. 10 slide, and the budget tables posted Nov. 9 kept the five events at this year's amounts, as our budget preview found. Whether the $75,000 "events and supplies" line is the leaf-collection money under a new name, the deck does not say.

The budget, by the slides

The general fund summary (p. 8) shows 2027 revenue of $16,472,100 against $15,983,316 in expenses, a surplus of $488,784. The spending splits into police ($3,823,944), public works ($2,812,275), parks and recreation ($1,210,061), general government, administration and library ($2,507,243), employee benefits and insurance ($4,724,677) and transfers to the fire, capital and debt service funds ($905,116). Across all funds, net of transfers between them, the borough would take in $31,594,263 and spend $31,034,344; the fire tax fund balances at $4,406,590, and four funds show a deficit: sewer ($115,091), refuse ($63,500), road tax ($43,100) and highway aid ($21,900) (p. 8).

The millage slide (p. 9) sets the total at 10.65 mills: 6.15 for the general fund, 3.00 for fire, and 0.50 each for the new recreation levy, EMS and roads, with "4.0 mills added" and the general fund's share up 1.0. A mill is $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value, so by our arithmetic the 4 added mills come to $400 per $100,000 of assessed value. The slide puts the change at $578 on the median home, which it assesses at $144,550, and $678 on the average home, at $169,410 (p. 9). That is the first document to say what home values sit behind the $578; the Nov. 2 memo council worked from a week earlier used a $133,500 median and got $534 (p. 3), and nothing posted explains the change in the median. The slide projects a general fund balance of $2,828,290.83 on Dec. 31, 2027, which it calls 17.7 percent of spending against a 17 percent target (p. 9). Fund balance is the money left in the account at year's end, the borough's cushion. The draft tax levy ordinance, No. 1467-2026, puts the same five rates into legal form (pp. 133-134). Our guide explains how a Berks property tax bill is figured.

The deck's background slide still prints a "total structural operating deficit" of $2.4 million to $2.7 million (p. 4), the range first shown in the September presentations we covered in our capital-requests story, even though Interim Borough Manager Eden Ratliff told council Nov. 3 that the restructuring left "a $2.2 to $2.4 million deficit," by the draft minutes (packet, p. 64), and the budget message says later analysis "refined the estimated operating deficit to approximately $2.2 million" (printed p. 5). Our October story covered the five scenarios that led to the 4-mill plan, and our Nov. 3 recap the 4-3 vote that chose it, recorded in the draft minutes in the packet (p. 68).

What is not on paper

The agenda's two budget items were "Consider advertisement for the 2027 Preliminary Borough Operating Budgets" and "Consider advertisement of the proposed 2027 Tax Ordinance" (p. 3). A preliminary budget is the draft council puts on public display before the final vote; advertising it starts that display period. The deck's timeline slide labels Nov. 10 "Adopt and Advertise Preliminary Budget" (p. 2), but the same line appeared on the Nov. 3 deck (slide 2) before the meeting happened. It is the schedule, not a record of a vote. As of Thursday morning, neither the budget page nor the news-flash listing offered minutes of the meeting, and no signed copy of any of the four ordinances is posted; the borough's Agenda Center describes itself as the place to "view current agendas for all boards and commissions and approved Council minutes," so the written record will wait for a later meeting. The 11/10 news flash that links the deck carries the borough's standard line that its summary "does not replace official meeting minutes." The budget and tax votes, and the votes on Ordinances 1465-2026 and 1466-2026, are not yet documented in writing; the recording is the only account, and we have not reviewed it.

What happens next

The 2027 Budget page now lists its next meeting as "12/2 - Open House." The deck bills it as a Budget Town Hall on Wednesday, Dec. 2, "time & location TBD," an open house "to meet Borough departments, engage with Council members" and get budget information (p. 11); the calendar entry places it at Borough Hall with the time still TBA. The special meeting to adopt the budget is Tuesday, Dec. 15. The budget page carries a public feedback form and an FAQ (deck, p. 10). Borough Hall, 22 Reading Blvd., is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 610-376-7481. The minutes, when posted, will carry the tallies. Our guide explains how to find any Berks municipality's meeting schedule.