For more than 60 years, Wisler Pearlstine has served as solicitor and special counsel to numerous municipalities, zoning boards, water and sewer authorities and other governmental agencies throughout Chester, Bucks and especially Montgomery County. At this point, our firm enjoys an established municipal law reputation throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania and has one of the largest municipal practices in the Commonwealth. We have seven attorneys who practice municipal law on virtually a full-time basis and almost every attorney in the firm has become involved in some aspect of our municipal law practice. In addition, while we represent numerous municipalities and governmental agencies, many of our solicitorships are not new appointments. A number of our partners have represented municipalities for 10, 15, and even 20 years or more. As a result, the breadth of our municipal law experience is truly significant.
- Our entire municipal team has extensive experience in subdivision, land development and zoning matters as well as all the agreements contemplated by the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code. We intentionally maintain a strong zoning and land development practice in the municipalities we do not represent. It has always been our belief that developing expertise from “both sides of the table” is particularly helpful to our municipal clients. In essence, there are very few arguments that can be made or positions taken on behalf of a developer in one of our municipalities that one of our partners has not taken on behalf of a private client. We believe this knowledge and experience is extremely helpful to our municipal clients in the subdivision and land development area.
- We are regularly asked to act as special counsel to many municipalities in the Philadelphia suburban area who require advice on particularly complex curative amendment or substantative validity challenges or even Federal Court litigation involving zoning matters.
- We regularly draft ordinances, resolutions, public notices, conditional use decisions, zoning hearing board decisions and a great variety of other legal documents that are a routine part of any municipal practice. We also maintain a large library of less frequently used agreements, so that every new problem does not have to be an exercise starting from scratch.
- We litigate for municipal clients. We have represented municipal clients as both plaintiff and defendant in the Court of Common Pleas and as appellant and appellee in the Commonwealth Court, Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Notwithstanding our firm’s extensive municipal litigation experience, all our Solicitors take particular pride in providing the kind of practical advice that helps keep our municipalities out of the courtroom unless confrontation is unavoidable.
- We easily handle many employment law matters in-house with three attorneys in the firm who focus on personnel issues, labor law and collective bargaining agreements. In addition, we have negotiated police and public sector contracts and have handled numerous employment arbitration proceedings.
- The firm serves as bond counsel for municipal bond issues and writes opinion letters as borrower’s solicitor. We are experienced counsel for our municipalities in the private sale of notes and have a working knowledge of the Local Government Unit Debt Act and DCED requirements and procedures.
- Both the municipal team and our firm’s real estate attorneys have developed expertise in specialty real estate transactions for local governments and agencies, including conservation easements, open space acquisition, condemnation, deed restrictions and covenants, utility easements, maintenance easements and numerous other interests in real property.
Who we represent
As noted above, our municipal attorneys truly specialize in this practice area. Municipal law has been an integral part of Wisler Pearlstine’s legal work since the firm was founded. We take pride in keeping the attorneys in this department at the cutting edge of new developments in the field, and we fully support them (with frequent advice from our other departments) to address all the challenges of our municipal clients. As a result of this expertise, we have earned an extensive client list. We currently represent the following municipalities and other local government entities:
A. Municipal Solicitorships
- Cheltenham Township
- Collegeville Borough
- East Coventry Township
- Lower Gwynedd Township
- Lower Salford Township
- Red Hill Borough
- Worcester Township
- Whitpain Township
B. Other Local Government Representations
- Chalfont-New Britain Township Joint Sewer Authority
- Lower Moreland Township Zoning Hearing Board
- Montgomery County Housing Authority
- Pennridge Wastewater Treatment Authority
- Rockledge Borough Zoning Hearing Board
- Northern Montgomery County Recycling Commission
- Collegeville-Trappe Municipal Authority
- Collegeville-Trappe Joint Public Works Committee
Why Municipal Clients Choose Wisler Pearlstine
We are leaders in municipal law. Since the founding of our firm we have always had several partners and associates who have concentrated their entire practices in the area of municipal law. We know the unique challenges facing our municipal clients on a day-to-day basis and we have developed an expertise in the substantive and procedural law that applies uniquely to them. A familiarity with this body of law enables us to quickly grasp the problems and issues facing our municipal clients. We also pride ourselves in working closely with our municipalities to establish best practices and procedures to prevent problems from arising in the future.
We draw from other disciplines of the law. Our municipal clients have more than just their municipal law needs met by Wisler Pearlstine. We are a full service firm for local governments and their related agencies.
- We easily handle most employment law issues in-house utilizing the services of our attorneys experienced in personnel issues, labor law and collective bargaining agreements.
- We have tax and business practice lawyers available for consultation and assistance in matters of taxation and business.
- Our construction litigation department is often called upon to consult with our municipal clients regarding issues related to major building projects, including breach of contract, bid disputes and related construction issues.
- With respect to local taxation, our experience is broad. We regularly counsel clients as they enact earned income tax ordinances under the Local Tax Enabling Act. We are well versed in the changes brought about by Act 32 and are actively following each county’s tax collection committee. We negotiate the agreements for our clients who wish to contract with tax collection agencies.
- We have negotiated and written cell tower agreements, cable television, sanitary sewer and water franchise agreements, as well as numerous intergovernmental cooperation agreements related to a wide variety of shared responsibilities.
We prevent problems down the road. We educate and prepare our municipal clients to avoid problems in the future and when problems do arise, we are readily available to counsel our clients with common sense and practical advice in order to keep problems contained and costs to a minimum.
We have unique strengths. We practice municipal law using a modified “team” approach with one attorney typically having primary responsibility for a municipal client, but with other attorneys assisting in the representation as needed and within the particular area of expertise they have developed. Given this team approach, we are able to expedite our municipal work and deliver the highest standards of quality, cost effectively. We are always able to utilize the team member with the particular expertise which would most benefit the municipality. It is also our practice to maintain attorney continuity at meetings as much as possible, since this consistency of representation is appreciated by our clients and helps minimize duplication of efforts when dealing with complex, ongoing issues.
