Idon't have a dog in the fight, so it doesn't matter to me if Mount Wolf Borough and East Manchester Township merge or not.

I wish -- for the sake of regionalization -- they had merged, though, because it would have made it easier for other neighboring communities throughout York County to follow suit. You always need someone to break the ice, take the lead position in the parade.

It's like the old kids' game, Follow the leader. No one wants to be the leader -- too much pressure -- but once someone does take the lead, it's somehow comforting for everyone else to jump on the bandwagon.

After about two years of studying a proposal that would have combined Mount Wolf Borough and East Manchester Township, Mount Wolf's borough council voted 4-3 against combining forces. And they did it now rather than give voters a voice in the decision at the November election.

What it apparently came down to in the end is that enough residents of Mount Wolf and, of course, a majority of council members couldn't bring themselves to give up their autonomy. Their independence -- making decisions for and by themselves without outside interference -- obviously meant more to them than what could have been gained by a merger.

What's that? you might ask. Money. Taxes. Improved services.

It's no secret that Mount Wolf Borough is landlocked. No room to grow. No room to even stretch, to be honest. And that can be deadly in the long term for taxpayers.

Because one thing is for sure, the

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cost of everything necessary to run a municipality is going to increase from one year to the next. Streets don't get less expensive to fix. Snow doesn't get cheaper to plow. Buildings don't cost less to maintain. Insurance premiums don't get smaller. And wages and benefits for employees always grow from one year to the next.

Which means property taxes are going to increase to pay for all those things.

And in Mount Wolf's case, since there's no room for expansion and very little undeveloped land that could be converted for commercial use, the lion's share of the tax burden is going to fall on residential homeowners.

That means tax increases every year. It can't be avoided.

Proponents of the merger were worried about that. And one of the good things that would have come out of a merger is that borough residents would have seen a drop in millage from 2.9 mills to 1.505 mills in the first year alone.

That would have been a savings for residential taxpayers of between $75 and $400 a year, depending on the value of their property.

In the end, it might have come down to a fear of change on the parts of certain residents and council members.

Hey, I agree, change isn't always automatically better. Sometimes change can be a bad thing.

But a concern about being swallowed up by a larger neighbor, as was expressed by Councilman Ron Witmer, a 75-year resident of Mount Wolf Borough, is the worst possible reason to take a pass on this merger proposal.

Yes, the borough would have been known as a village instead of a borough. Big deal.

Yes, East Manchester would have held the majority vote on the combined council.

Yes, the township would (in reality) have been running Mount Wolf Borough. But East Manchester has done a pretty decent job of looking after itself, so I doubt borough residents had anything to fear, except of change.

Neither the borough or township had a lot to gain by a merger, and they wouldn't have had much to lose, either. It would have been a slightly less expensive ticket into the future for both, which would have given the borough, especially, a chance to spread its wings.

For now, nothing's going to change. It's gonna be the same-old, same-old. East Manchester Township can live with that.

But over the long haul, I'm not sure the same can be said for Mount Wolf Borough.

Columns by Larry A. Hicks, Dispatch columnist, run Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail: lhicks@yorkdispatch.com.