FRANKLIN TWP — Supervisors met Monday, Nov. 18, to workshop a preliminary budget for the upcoming year that will see no tax increase for residents.

The preliminary budget for 2025 totals around $1,435,000, a decrease from this year’s budget of $1,485,000.

The millage rate for the township will remain at 3.75 mills if no changes are made to the draft budget before its final adoption.

The township also takes a fire protection tax of 2 mills. This rate also will be the same as 2024.

Board chairman Nathan Wulff said while the opportunity was available to increase supervisors’ wages, the board opted against this increase.

The budget workshop meeting was the second workshop meeting for this year. In this session, the focus was primarily placed on donations and miscellaneous expenses.

Erica Northrop, a director of the Prospect Boys and Girls Club, petitioned the board to consider maintaining or increasing its annual donation. She said the club helps to lower rates of juvenile delinquency, build competence for young members and attract new residents to the area.

“I know there’s a lot of families in the club that are transplants, and a lot of them participated in the club for their kids,” Northrop said.

With this in mind, the board chose to increase its donation to the club from $1,000 to $5,000 for the upcoming year. Board members also chose to maintain annual donations to Prospect Community Library and the Meals on Wheels program.

The board also chose to rearrange allocations for road services, moving $100,000 out of the construction budget and transferring it to maintenance. Members of the board said trees on certain roads had become hazardous to larger commercial and emergency vehicles.

“Most of our roads aren’t terrible, but I know you go down Election House Road, Grindel Road and some of those areas, it’s a solid canopy,” Wulff said. “I know, just driving firetrucks back and forth, we’re scraping on a bunch of them.”

The board is investigating options to digitize its files as well, as concerns grow about the cost of paper storage. Vice chairman Joe Schubert cited costs for fire cabinets at $5,000 each. While the most important documents can be stored in fire cabinets, most of them would be lost in an emergency.

“God forbid there’s a fire, we’d be back to square one,” Wulff said.

Wulff believes that while the up-front cost of digitizing the files would be higher, the township would save money in the long run. The board is still considering options for a cloud-based storage service as well as keeping the files on physical drives.

The finalized budget for 2025 will likely be approved at the board’s regular meeting Dec. 16.

Residents can view the preliminary budget by visiting the Franklin Township building.