The Jiggershop operates for free

If you ask a local commercial real estate guru what the going rate is for a land lease for a seasonal restaurant located in a town with a lot of visitors, they will tell you its about $20 per square foot. Compare that to the rate that the Jiggershop owners, Chuck Allwein and Andrew Allwein, pay for leasing the land that their Jiggershop restaurant is on in Mount Gretna: about $2 a square foot. No, that's not a typo.

It is probably more like a reward for letting the land owner, the Pennsylvania Chautauqua, use the Allweins' public official authority to approve the use of public resources to provide this private company with a boatload of taxpayer subsidized property maintenance services.

Yep, that's right. In return for letting their dear family friend and Mount Gretna Borough Public Works Director, William Care, use Borough staff, vehicles, and equipment to mow the private company's lawns, to repair and paint the private company's buildings, and build, pave, and otherwise maintain the private company's parking lots (which keep the environs of the Allweins' Jiggershop loaded with paying customers), Borough Council President Charles Allwein and Gretna Sewer and Water Authority Boardmember Andrew Allwein realisticially get the land for their Jiggershop restaurant for free.

On top of that, this author has been provided no substantiation that the Jiggershop owners, Chuck Allwein and Drew Allwein are actually paying for the Jiggershop's Sewer and Water Authority fees.

And, dear friend Bill Care now gets to not only request a full-time paycheck from a public employer for what is really only a part-time job (remember, the Borough actually owns no land or buildings within its boundaries), but Bill Care also gets an average of nearly 700 hours of overtime a year and health, dental, vision, disability, etc benefits. His state retirement contribution is also completely paid for by the Borough. Which is to say that the only entity on the hook for Bill Care's $120,000+ compensation package is the Borough of Mount Gretna.

No matter what the Allweins, the Borough and the Authority and the Chautauqua Financial Secretary Linda Bell, or the Chautuaqua, the Borough, the Authority, and the Gretna Playhouse Public Works Director Bill Care SAYS to you about there being some other entity paying the costs here, they can not substantiate it with hard evidence. The fact remains that Care "bills" the Borough, and the Borough alone, for his $120,000 compensation package.

So it seems that these public officials-family friends have managed to enjoy quite the lucrative arrangement of profiteering from their public offices.