Portage Borough Council creates advisory committees

Officials hope to promote greater involvement from community

PORTAGE -- Two advisory committees were established during Wednesday's Portage Borough Council meeting with the hopes of involving the community in more of the borough's affairs.

Borough Manager Makayla Zonfrilli-Lang is currently soliciting letters of interest from borough residents interested in serving on either a code enforcement advisory committee or a budget advisory committee, both of which were established through council resolutions Wednesday.

Since the borough doesn't have a full-time code enforcement officer, the code enforcement committee is to help lighten the workload of Zonfrilli-Lang, who doesn't live in the borough, works part time and is also overseeing the borough's human resources, finance and code enforcement departments on top of her duties as borough manager.

The committee members would drive around and report ordinance violations to the borough's police officers, who would then issue citations and inform Zonfrilli-Lang of what ordinances were violated on a monthly basis, she said.

According to Zonfrilli-Lang, the borough's ordinances haven't been updated at length for "quite some time," so the committee would also be able to help ensure the borough's codes and ordinances are clear, easy to understand and enforce.

"Our current ordinances are very broad and they're hard to enforce when they're that broad because you have the gray line, right? It's not black and white," Zonfrilli-Lang said, noting the most recent ordinance the borough just updated was its road restoration ordinance, which states how far down officials have to put filling in before they can put the asphalt over top of it when restoring roads.

The budget advisory committee, on the other hand, is not as needed for Zonfrilli-Lang specifically, she said, noting she's pretty good with budget and finance and just wants to involve more community input in the process.

"What I want to achieve through this budget committee is transparency and engagement from the community," Zonfrilli-Lang said.

Any residents who are interested should submit a cover letter and resume to Zonfrilli-Lang, who can be contacted through email at mklang@portageboropa.gov.

Zonfrilli-Lang said she's hoping to get at least three to five volunteers appointed to each committee at the council's October meeting. However, since the council would have to nominate and approve each volunteer, not everyone who submits a cover letter and resume will necessarily be appointed, she added.

"If you have three resumes but only one of them is really good, you don't have to nominate all three; you can nominate (just) one," Zonfrilli-Lang said. "It's like a pick and choose, but it's a public facilitated action."

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520.