Pennsylvania Statutes Title 53 Pa.C.S.A. Municipalities Generally § 5403. Powers of governing body

(1) To establish within the municipal corporation an area or areas designated as a business improvement district, which district or districts may be designated as all or part of any community which is zoned commercial or which is used for general commercial purposes.

(2) To appropriate and expend those amounts as may be necessary for preliminary planning or feasibility studies to determine needed improvements in business improvement districts, to recommend improvement to individual properties and to provide where required basic design criteria. Public hearings shall be required before passage of the enabling ordinance at which any interested party may be heard. Notice of the hearings shall be advertised at least ten days prior thereto in a newspaper circulating in the municipal corporation. The ordinance shall specify improvements, with respective costs. The ordinance shall not become effective if, before the expiration of 20 days after its enactment, property owners of the proposed district whose property valuation as assessed for taxable purposes amounts to more than 50% of the total property valuation of the district sign and file in the office of the prothonotary of the court of common pleas a written protest against the ordinance.

(3) To appropriate and expend in accordance with the specific provisions of the enabling ordinance such amounts as may be required to acquire by purchase or lease real or personal property to effectuate the purposes of the improvement district, including sidewalks, retaining walls, street paving, street lighting, parking lots, parking garages, trees and shrubbery purchased and planted, pedestrian walks, sewers, water lines and rest areas and acquisition and remodeling or demolition of blighted buildings and similar or comparable structures. No improvement shall be made to property which has not been acquired.

(4) To acquire by gift, purchase or eminent domain, land, real property or rights-of-way which may be needed for the purposes of the projected improvements within the district.

(5) To issue bonds, notes or guarantees in accordance with the provisions of general laws authorizing borrowing by cities of the first class or in accordance with Subpart B of Part VII (relating to indebtedness and borrowing), whichever is applicable, in the amounts and for the periods necessary to finance the projected improvements for any district.