For the past few years I have attended Manville Borough Council meetings, and asked for information from our town’s leadership concerning the Manville Department of Public Works.
Mike Kassick, Manville
For the past few years I have attended Manville Borough Council meetings, and asked for information from our town’s leadership concerning the Manville Department of Public Works, its ways of doing day-to-day business, and its many outdated policies and procedures. All of the information I have requested is public record since it involves our tax dollars.
The first question I asked was regarding the Public Works Department cutting grass and maintaining property along the railroad tracks, owned by the railroads. The answer I was given by the public works director was, “As long as I have been director, we have always taken care of the property.” I caught up with a few retired Manville public works employees and supervisors, and I was told that the answer I was given was totally untrue and this was never the case in the past. Now the borough wants to start taking care of the overpass on Main Street, also owned by the railroad company. More of our tax dollars being wasted to care for privately owned property.
The next thing I asked about was public works’ “standby time,” and the overtime paid for grass dropoffs. I was told that this was in the binding, negotiated contract with public works. After investigating a little and reading the contract, I discovered that the contract states that “standby time” is at the discretion of the public works director.
My view is that, during the winter, or when a storm is predicted, these are times that warrant employees to be on stand by, not every week of the year. Maybe if our public works employees were not being used to care for privately owned railroad properties, they would actually have time to pick up grass clippings with the garbage like they had always done in the past.
The third question I have asked repeatedly is the fact that many employees are given taxpayer-owned borough vehicles to bring home. Our town is a little less than 3 square miles; why do our employees need to bring vehicles home? Over the years I have witnessed residents come to council meetings reporting that they had seen Manville, taxpayer-owned vehicles driving on weekends and off schedule hours all over the state. The response is still, and always been, “We’ll look into it.”
This is a serious abuse of taxpayer money, and at the pace the borough is “looking into it” is going, we will never get a truthful answer. At the very least, you would think that our borough would show a little effort and, at the very minimum, come up with a very detailed vehicle use policy, which it does not have to date.
The last time I looked, our country is still in a recession. With all the other problems in town, you would think that this leadership would be working hard to find ways to cut costs and lower, or at least stabilize, taxes. Manville’s leadership has done just the opposite, with out-of-control spending, raising our town’s debt in an out-of-control matter. Instead of rolling up their sleeves and doing some old-fashioned work, they raise taxes, and take bonds out like they are free. Bonds have to be repaid. Vehicles and gas cost money. Overtime costs money.
This town is being run by a reckless administration. Driving our town’s debt to out-of-control levels, with not one ounce of good judgment or leadership, even though our town is overloaded with so called “experts,” who are paid very well in some cases better than their counterparts in larger, wealthier towns in our county.
The only answer we ever get as taxpaying citizens, the ones who pay the bills for all of this waste, is the answer the mayor always gives, which is, “We’re working on it.” He’s been giving that answer for nearly 20 years, and our taxes just keep going up, while our town’s well-being takes a dive down to an unrecoverable state.
Mike Kassick
Manville

