{"id":249821,"date":"2026-07-22T23:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T23:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/249821\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T23:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T23:20:08","slug":"negotiations-occur-over-the-sale-and-leaseback-of-mount-penns-water-system-reading-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/249821\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiations occur over the sale and leaseback of Mount Penn&#8217;s water system | Reading Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mt. Penn, Pa. &#8211; A disagreement started over negotiations involving the sale and leaseback of Mount Penn&#8217;s water system.<\/p>\n<p>Borough Manager Hunter Ahrens says borough officials thought they had a deal, but when the Water Authority rejected it, the council started taking steps to move forward with creating a new water authority.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey rejected that deal after we had approved it, so at this point, we don&#8217;t believe that there&#8217;s anything to negotiate about because it seems that the authority is not going to be a partner in anything that we can accept,&#8221; said Ahrens.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Water Authority, however, sees it differently. Chairman Joe Boyle says the borough stopped negotiating in good faith and instead began working to dissolve the authority.<\/p>\n<p>Borough officials say they have the right to transfer ownership and take back assets. Sharing that if this fight goes to court, the entire community will be paying for it.<\/p>\n<p>Ahrens assures customers that no matter what, people&#8217;s water will stay on.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;It&#8217;s at court because the authority doesn&#8217;t want to comply with the Municipal Authorities act,&#8221; said Ahrens.<\/p>\n<p>The special meeting is planned for 7 p.m. tonight to decide whether the water authority wants to take this issue to court, and what that means for water systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mt. Penn, Pa. &#8211; A disagreement started over negotiations involving the sale and leaseback of Mount Penn&#8217;s water&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[16129,8517,8668,106838,128,130,129,106837,70595],"class_list":["post-249821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-borough-council","tag-hunter-ahrens","tag-mount-penn","tag-municipal-authorities-act","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-sale-and-leaseback","tag-water-authority"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}