{"id":281658,"date":"2026-09-08T19:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T19:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/281658\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T19:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T19:36:08","slug":"tax-hike-expected-in-lower-merion-as-2027-budget-talks-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/281658\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax Hike Expected In Lower Merion As 2027 Budget Talks Begin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The township saw health insurance premiums increase 19.9 percent for 2026. With general health care costs surging and higher-than-expected claims utilization, there could be another double-digit increase in 2027.<\/p>\n<p>Lower Merion is also negotiating contracts with its two unions, adding further uncertainty to next year&#8217;s personnel costs.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, police are requesting the purchase and implementation of a Drone as a First Responder (DFR) program through Axon. Axon DFR allows a drone to be remotely deployed to qualifying calls of service, providing real-time aerial intelligence before emergency responders arrive and while they&#8217;re present.<\/p>\n<p>It could be particularly useful for incidents involving crimes in progress, armed individuals, vehicle pursuits and searches for missing persons, officials say. The program would cost an estimated $75,000 per year for five years.<\/p>\n<p>The preliminary budget includes department requests that have been submitted to the Finance Department since June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The township saw health insurance premiums increase 19.9 percent for 2026. With general health care costs surging and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[183,185,184,186],"class_list":["post-281658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281658","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=281658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}