Chadds Ford Township supervisors passed the 2013 budget, but it took 2-and-a-half hours of public meeting time. Residents spent the hours expressing concerns over employee salaries and paperwork procedures that left the township under assessed for three years.
The budget is balanced and there are no tax increases. It also reflects an employee retirement plan in which the township matches an employee’s contribution, up to 3 percent of the salary.
Employee salaries became a topic of discussion during the November meeting when the preliminary budget was released. At that time, Webb Road resident Samantha Reiner asked about the compensation package for Township Manager Joe Barakat. The salary was not noted on the budget that supervisors provided. At the time, Supervisors’ Chairman George Thorpe said he didn’t know the salary because he didn’t have the figures in front of him.
He declined to answer when again asked about the managers’ salary during the Dec. 5 meeting, saying he couldn’t answer because the budget had not yet been passed.
During that meeting, a proposed final budget also failed to show salaries. Reiner asked again, adding that in the interim she had filed a Right to Know request and received 50 pages of documents from the solicitor’s office that failed to provide the requested information.
A heated discussion between several residents, Thorpe and solicitor Hugh Donaghue followed. It took 30 minutes before Barakat said he’s getting $81,500. (Supervisor Keith Klaver said the Sewer Authority pays 30 percent of Barakat’s salary.)
Public employee salaries are supposed to be public information. Some townships include those salaries as line items, but the budget made available to residents in Chadds Ford did not include such information, only a single line showing a total of all salaries for all employees. Supervisors eventually did make available a budget with individual salaries shown, but only after a lengthy and testy freewheeling conversation.
During the discussion, residents also wanted to know what Barakat receives in health benefit reimbursement and his travel and mileage benefits.
Barakat was hired as township manager in April 2009. At the time, supervisors said his compensation was going to be $69,000 — salary and benefits — for the remaining nine months of that year. He is also the township roadmaster and emergency management coordinator. According to Supervisor Deborah Love, Barakat is on call virtually 24/7.
Tension at the meeting did not end with the salary issue. Tax collector Valerie Hoxter wanted to know what was being done to rectify a situation in which the Delaware County assessors’ office under assessed township properties since 2009.
According to Hoxter and former tax collector Bruce Prabel, roughly 150 Certificates of Occupancy and permits were either never filed with or were never recorded by the assessors’ office. This resulted in township properties being under assessed, which kept the three taxing bodies — the county, the township and the Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board — from collecting the amount of taxes they should.
Prabel made a private presentation on the matter to the board in August. He said in an interview this week that as much as $500,000 in tax revenue was lost between the three groups, with the township losing an estimated $15,000.
The former tax collector said the new PNC Bank at Glen Eagle Square was never assessed, that a $3 million home that was moved into in 2009 has not yet been reassessed and that there no reassessments for number of homes in the township where additions and renovations were made.
He told the board that the situation is “absolutely scandalous.”
During an exchange between Hoxter and Barakat, it was revealed that the work of a former employee was being reviewed. Hoxter said after the meeting that she and Barakat’s discussed the situation in early 2010.
“It showed up on his radar screen three times,” she said.
When the township began reviewing the situation is unclear, but Reiner said the COs have not been conveyed properly since Barakat took office.
Donaghue said assessment is the county’s responsibility and that the township can’t do the county’s job. He said the township properly filed all documents.
According to Thorpe, “We’re doing what we should. We can’t do the county’s job…We’re going to do what we can.”
Barakat said the township is looking to buy new software that should prevent further occurrences.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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