SANATOGA PA – More than just how their tax money gets spent, former Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township commissioner Anthony Doyle thinks local residents should be able to conveniently see where it gets spent.
A page from the township's Nov. 2010 warrants
Doyle, who attended Monday night’s (May 2, 2011) Board of Commissioners‘ meeting, repeated a suggestion he was fond of making while in office: the township should post its warrants on its website, he said.
Warrants are lengthy lists (they sometimes exceed 30 pages) of revenues received at and expenses paid by the township during a given month. Warrants for a previous month are usually reviewed by commissioners during their first meeting of the following month. The board Monday, for example, accepted the April 2011 warrant for review. Warrants usually are approved during their second meeting.
Minutes of board meetings are already posted on the website, Doyle argued; warrants, he contended, should be there too. “I think it would be helpful to the public. I think it would help the township be more transparent,” he said.
Commissioners thanked him for the comment, but took no action on the matter.
As public documents, warrants are available for viewing during regular business hours – Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. – at the township office, 2199 Buchert Rd., Pottstown PA.
Related (to the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners’ meeting of May 2):
- Former Commissioner Seeks Warrants On Township Web
- Blue-Light Special: Tax Refund Due For Sanatoga K-Mart
- Stop Sign May Be Answer For Pruss Hill Road Crashes
The format of these warrants might easily be transferred to an online system. This would enable easy public viewing via Excell or other format.
Fully support moving this to a system that would enable online viewing. What exactly is the rationale for not doing so??
Ed, the warrants are created by an accounting database system. They are e-mailed monthly to commissioners as an Adobe Acrobat portable document. The same document could be posted on the website for download by anyone who wanted to see it. There is no additional work involved. For whatever reason, and they haven’t publicly offered a rationale, the commissioners simply aren’t interested in doing it.