Fee Collections, Inspections Bolstered In Warminster

WARMINSTER, PA —"It's like an ant colony."

That's how Warminster Township Manager Tom Scott describes the work being done by township officials to collect fees for permits, inspections, and apartment rentals.

At its Township Supervisors meeting last month, Scott presented his report on 2023 apartment rental and inspection fee collections.

"We've put a lot of elbow grease into collecting fees and doing inspections," Scott told supervisors. "We're very busy."

And that "ant colony" work has paid off, Scott said.

Scott said that as of the end of August, the township had collected $1.175 million in fees. He did say that $500,000 of that came from Tesla, which is opening its first dealership in Bucks County by the end of the year.

While "Tesla is to be expected," Scott said that last year the township only collected $170,000 in fees.

"This was dead in the water last year," Scott said.

He said collection fees have been helped by new software and that the four new full-time firefighters recently hired by the township will also be assigned to perform code enforcement and building inspections.

Scott said there has been an improvement in the collection of retail licenses, apartment inspections, and safety and sanitation inspections.

Scott said that in the past few months, several hundred apartment dwellings have been inspected.

"I'm not trying to make this about how the program should have been better, but it's important to have these preventative inspections," Scott said.

"It's about time," Supervisors Chairman Kenneth Hayes said. "We need to protect the public."