In re Incorporation of the Borough of Glen Mills

The Glen Mills School (Glen Mills) (plaintiff), was a nonprofit, residential rehabilitation school for court-committed boys. Glen Mills owned 779 acres of land within and around Thornbury Township (Thornbury) (defendant). Glen Mills maintained its own roads, water, sewage, and trash services, but did not have its own firefighters or police. Glen Mills’ employees and their families lived on school grounds in school-owned residences. Glen Mills filed a petition for borough incorporation, arguing that Glen Mills’ employees and their families could be the borough citizens and that taxes currently paid to Thornbury could be repurposed to cover the cost of developing any community services Glen Mills did not already provide. As required by the Pennsylvania Borough Code, the trial court appointed an expert advisory committee to evaluate the viability of Glen Mills’ borough-incorporation petition. The advisory committee found that allowing Glen Mills to incorporate would have a negative geographic impact on Thornbury’s territorial integrity. Because Glen Mills’ land was not a cohesive unit, if Glen Mills were allowed to incorporate as a self-governing borough, it would leave several small pockets of Thornbury completely surrounded by Glen Mills and would effectively isolate a large residential section of Thornbury by leaving it connected to the rest of the township by only a thin strip of Thornbury land bordered on one side by Glen Mills and the other by a neighboring township. The trial court denied Glen Mills’ borough-incorporation petition, holding that (1) it would have a detrimental impact on Thornbury Township’s territorial integrity; and (2) allowing a single landowner to incorporate their land as a borough created tremendous risk for exploitation, overreach, and exclusion. Glen Mills appealed, arguing that geographic impact was an inappropriate factor for the court to consider because it was not specifically listed as a factor in the Borough Code.