We have an opportunity to improve the lives of all Carlisle residents, create local jobs and ensure our waste or energy generation doesn't spoil people's air or water.  While some may not realize it, Carlisle does an excellent job at cleaning and bringing the Conodoguinets water to our homes and businesses.  The water we receive is of higher quality and delivered at a much lower price than many of the municipalities that get their water from the for-profit companies such as American Water. If we are doing this with water, why not solid waste collection, electricity generation, and home heating. Rather than drain our towns dollars to investors on Wall Street we should ensure they stay here in our community providing utilities that are controlled by our community.
Electricity
Currently, Pennsylvania State Law gives boroughs broad power over the regulation and sale of electricity, see tittle 8 Chapter 24A under the consolidated statutes. Carlisle along with several other boroughs has petitioned the Pennsylvania Utility Commission to purchase in bulk renewable electricity for willing residents. This would allow us to obtain a high percentage of renewable electricity at a rate lower than any individual could purchase on their own. There is also potential for Carlisle to become its own electricity generator, in a way that we could provide cheap and clean electricity to our residents and small businesses. 
Networked Geothermal
Networked Geothermal is a type of utility composed of an interconnected network of shallow boreholes beneath our streets and public right of ways. This network circulates water in a closed loop at an ambient temperature and acts as both a massive heat sink and source of energy. Heat pumps placed in homes and businesses can extract or reject heat to the network, maintaining a home's temperature year round. Networked Geothermal has several advantages over other types of heating and cooling sources in that it is one of the most efficient forms of heating and cooling while providing low up front costs to home and business owners and utilizing technology that has a long life span. There are colleges and towns across the country that have networked geothermal heating systems, and more are being planned than ever before.  The first two steps in implementing a utility of this nature would be conducting a feasibility study, followed by a demonstration project. Pennsylvania's department of community and economic development offers grants for conducting these first steps.
Solid Waste Collection
Currently, the borough is examining bringing Solid waste collection in house, this has the potential to reduce costs, improve safety, and the lives of the people who collect our solid waste. However, we can go further, one of the largest costs to running a solid waste collection program is the tipping fee, or the fee it costs to dump waste at a landfill. We can help mitigate this cost by collecting things such as food waste separately. Dickinson College has just completed an anaerobic digester that has capacity to accept a large amount of additional food waste. This digester generates energy from the food waste and will accept food waste at no cost as long as it is free of contaminants. We can run a pilot program in Carlisle to better understand if the cost savings from diverting food waste from the land fill can pay for a food waste collection program.