SANATOGA PA – The financial work of one of Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township‘s most recognizable personalities – its late treasurer, Sally A. Moyer – was successfully and finally concluded Monday night (Dec. 6, 2010), more than three years after her death.

Sally A. Moyer.

The township Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to accept a mutual release and settlement agreement with the Moyer estate. It sorts out and ends the official business Moyer began in 1982, when she was elected treasurer. The parties agreed the township owes the estate more than $3,000 for services she provided, but did not bill for, in the years preceding her death from cancer in June 2007 at age 74.

Moyer’s was a well-known face in the township, not only to adults and taxpayers with whom she worked, but also to generations of children. She was a former secretary at Lower Pottsgrove Elementary School on North Pleasant View Road in Sanatoga; she was the leader for 20 years of Sanatoga Girl Scout Troop 470; and she also operated Sally’s Sewing Center on East High Street.

Representatives of the estate and the township have worked since Moyer’s death to reconcile books and accounts she kept, some of which were under her own federal tax identification number, according to current Treasurer Jennifer Marsteller. That was a common and legal practice among some tax collectors in years past, those familiar with municipal operations report, but it took time to ensure the accounts were up-to-date.

Closing the books was made more difficult by the fact that Moyer’s bills for services were submitted on an occasional, rather than a monthly or quarterly, basis. Those, too, had to be caught up before a settlement could be reached.

“There’s been a lot of back and forth in all of this,” township Manager Rodney Hawthorne said.

Board members, who asked how similar complications might be avoided in the future, learned from Solicitor R. Kurtz Holloway that accounts handled by Marsteller are kept under the township’s federal identification number, not her own; that Marsteller’s bills to the township are submitted on a pre-determined schedule; and that she has the ability – but has not yet opted – to appoint a deputy tax collector for official record-keeping assistance.

Related (to the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners’ meeting of Dec. 6):

• Township, Moyer Estate Settle Late Treasurer’s Accounts
• Commissioners Meet Tonight, With A Busy Agenda