GEOGRAPHY IS DESTINY Located at the foot of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge on major State Highway Rt. 73, the city offers easy and direct access to Philadelphia and Interstate 95, the NJ Turnpike, I-295, and Rt. 130 in NJ. This, plus its close proximity to millions of people in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area, makes Palmyra very attractive to commercial interests, resulting in, as in ancient Palmyra, a strong and vibrant economy with the ability to finance the construction of, if not monumental, then surely useful commercial, and often necessary, civic structures. “We have a very healthy and substantial fund balance, or surplus, especially for a community of our size,” says Borough Administrator, John J. Gural. “Before we adopted the 2024 budget of $11 million, we had more than $5.8 million in available surplus, which gives any municipality the ability to do a number of projects that they would not normally be able to do.” Those projects include: the redevelopment of unused or underused realty for commercial purposes; infrastructure maintenance and improvements throughout the borough; funding for housing, recreation, and public amenities; and investing in unique projects and processes that save money and improve services for its businesses and citizens. “We’re very conservative in our budgeting techniques,” Gural adds. “But we’re very aggressive as far as the improvement and redevelopment projects that we take on, which is kind of the heart of what drives economic development in Palmyra.” REDEVELOPMENT PROJECTS Topping the redevelopment agenda in the borough is the Route 73 South Development Area -- about 186 acres of land which the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) designated as a Brownfields Development Area in 2003. “It was a former landfill and a former Army testing site for high explosive munitions at the end of World War II,” Gural explains. “We were able to turn that around.” Working with many public and private partners, including: the DEP, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the Fair Share Housing Center, the Burlington County Bridge Commission, the To cut costs and improve service the Borough is trans by investing over $1.5M in four new state-of-the-art operators as well as provided training to current Pub Gerbe, James Minino & Jon Petitte 183 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 05, ISSUE 09 PALMYRA, NJ
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