Members of the West Easton Council are supposed to act on issues that require attention, as a body, not individually. It’s the reason why Council voted to allow spending of up to a specified amount each month by the borough office to order items they might need without having to wait up to two weeks for Council approval.
This acting “as a body” to vote on expenditures is intended to stop individual Councilpersons from spending taxpayer money without consent of the other council members.
An example of such unilateral decisions happened when two Jeeps were purchased from private individuals, rather than from an auction a couple of years ago (the purchase from the auction was approved by the previous council, but not purchases from private individuals). Then additional monies were spent for painting one of those vehicles, police lights, and a police radio, as well as repairs for both vehicles. All of which I never heard the previous Council approve before the work and items were purchased.
What we ended up with was a police car, but no police department, and another Jeep that is currently being used by employees to run errands. Thousands of dollars were wasted in the process of preparing an unneeded vehicle for a non-existent police department due to the decisions of two people who served on the Council at that time.
On January 7th, I wrote about the upgrading of Borough Hall restrooms to make them ADA compliant.
I expect that Councilman Robert Lewis will bring this event before Council tonight, as he was the first to make note of an error in procedure of having that work performed. He is correct in doing so, as a reminder that we shouldn’t conduct ourselves in the same manner that previous council members did.
Even though the result would likely have been the same (upgrading the restrooms), Councilman Henry Nodoline should not have taken upon himself to initiate the upgrade without approval of Council.
While the restroom upgrade was needed, it was not an emergency to have them corrected without discussion. It could have waited until the next scheduled Council Meeting for a decision to be made on how much could be spent and who might be contacted to perform the job.
For most, it may seem that the expenditure of $1,167 for the upgrade was inexpensive and a bargain for a plumber to replace two toilets, including the installation of support bars. Even I think it was a bargain, but that isn’t really the point.
Following a procedure for approval of expenditures prevents any one Councilperson from spending money dependent only upon their personal opinion of what is needed.
It is a situation similar to the one I raised at a previous Council Meeting about Councilman Lewis ordering online Training Webinars from the PSAB website without approval of Council. That issue was ultimately resolved with an approved motion to allow him to continue doing so.
Without such a procedure in place bills could possibly be submitted by every Councilperson who decided that they would authorize some expenditure. Some of which might have been paid for by other means, or less expensively from other sources, if input and discussion had been available to others on Council.
Hopefully, Henry Nodoline won’t take the discussion, should it arise at the Council Meeting, as a personal attack and will move on with Borough business, accepting that he made a mistake. A mistake in a procedure that needs to be followed from this point forward.
(Did you find the mistake in the picture? Answer: In the question, the word, "the" appears twice.)
Disclaimer: On January 4, 2016, the owner of WestEastonPA.com began serving on the West Easton Council following an election. Postings and all content found on this website are the opinions of Matthew A. Dees and may not necessarily represent the opinion of the governing body for The Borough of West Easton.
