SANATOGA PA – As the year winds down, Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township has been doing a little house-cleaning. Two different and unrelated policy changes, unanimously adopted Nov. 18 (2010) by the Board of Commissioners, are intended to streamline the way the municipal government works, township solicitor R. Kurtz Holloway explained.
It's not so much a deep sweep, as it is a bit of "tidying up."
The first creates a policy governing board committees; the second sets procedures dealing with the sale of township equipment and other property. Sound boring? Well, they likely won’t bring visitors charging to the municipal building in protest, but they may actually shave a few minutes off the length of commissioners’ meetings.
The committee policy, Holloway said, officially recognizes the existence of only two board standing committees: finance (which includes the annual budget), and police. The others to which a board chairman made annual appointments – highway, regional planning, recreation, council of governments, pension, economic development, trash, buildings, and fire – “really had no authority to make recommendations to the board for actions,” according to Holloway.
With a stroke of a pen, held by board President Jonathan Spadt and applied to the policy – the unnecessary committees were history.
Board presidents still have power to make “ad hoc conference groups for the purposes of information gathering” on almost any topic, Holloway said; “they simply won’t have the same duties” or stature as before.
The equipment procedure acknowledges that many no longer used or desired items, originally purchased by the government with public funds, now are often disposed of in what Holloway called “very effective” online auctions and bidding forums. One such service, Municibid, was started by former Lower Pottsgrove resident Greg Berry and is used by government agencies in several states.
Some items sold, however, are for sums substantially less than $1,000; in a few cases, for less than $10. Having commissioners vote to ratify every such sale, as they have in the past, doesn’t make much sense, the solicitor noted.
The new procedure allows township staff to accept and approve bids of less than $1,000 for the sale of used equipment, so long as they have evidence that the selected bid (usually the highest) is within or exceeds a documented range of value. Bid awards of more than $1,000 must still be presented to commissioners for approval.
Related (to the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners’ meeting of Nov. 18):
- As Year Ends, Lower Pottsgrove Does A Little Cleaning
- No Change In Town’s 2011 Base Tax Rate, But Bills To Rise Slightly
- Legal Fight Shapes Up Over Signs In Lower Pottsgrove
- Township Thanks Dailey For 23 Years Of Volunteer Service
- ‘No Parking’ Zone Approved On North Adams Street
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