By Tom Gilchrist
For The Advertiser
DAYTON TWP. — Dayton Township Trustee James Satchel asked Saturday why township leaders aren’t planning to spend some of a $407,226 “nest egg” to help improve roads he claims are “going to pot.”
That led Gail Cook — wife of township Supervisor Robert Cook — to question Satchel’s motives during the township budget hearing attended by about 20 people.
“All you want to do, Mr. Satchel, is go into money and make this township broke,” Gail Cook told Satchel. “That’s what you want to do. Just like in Detroit.”
“And what is your name again? I didn’t get it,” Satchel asked Cook as her husband pounded his supervisor’s gavel on the table to try to quiet several conversations occurring in the audience.
“I guess you don’t know who I am, do you?” Gail Cook replied. “That shows how much you pay attention. My name is Gail Cook. I live in this township. It has nothing to do with it.”
Members of the township’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to approve spending $126,000 from the township general fund on road improvements in the fiscal year that started April 1. The township had a fund equity, or savings, of $407,226 as of that date, according to township Treasurer Eleanor Kilmer.
“We have money. it’s not like we’re broke,” Supervisor Cook told the audience. “But we’re not gonna be broke, neither. So let’s just get that straight right now. We’re not gonna be Washington (D.C.) or Detroit, or anywhere else.”
Before voting on the amount to be spent on roads,board members perused Cook’s “proposed” road budget listing possible improvements to Mayville, Treasurer, Plain, Phelps Lake and Pattison roads. Cook and Trustee Robert Steele sit on the township’s Roads Committee.
“When I look at the proposed road budget that we have, it appears — at a glance — that the roads that my board members here live on, that their roads are being focused on in this new budget,” Satchel said.
Supervisor Cook, however, said rising paving costs will alter what roads receive improvements.
“Most of this that I’ve got on (the proposed road budget) you can scrap,” Cook said. “Asphalt has gotten higher than what they predicted. I have the paperwork that told me — I thought — what it would cost, and when the bids were let, the county Road Commission, along with our township, got quite a shock.”
Township leaders on Saturday approved an amended general-fund budget showing $425,315 of expenditures in the fiscal year ending March 31. Heading into that fiscal year on April 1, 2013, the township fund equity or “rainy day fund” was $424,733 — almost equal to general-fund expenditures during the year.
The size of the savings drew praise from township resident Dr. Richard Horsch.
“This township’s doing well and let’s keep it that way,” Horsch said.
Though the board voted to take $126,000 from its general fund to improve roads, board members rejected Satchel’s suggestion to write out a plan to list which roads will receive improvement.
“It’s $126,000 — and Mayville Road (from Hurds Corner to Pattison roads) will be asphalt; the rest of it we’ll just have to pick and choose, just like we always do,” Cook said.
Township resident Robert Adams asked if the budget specifies how much each board member or employee receives in mileage money, but the supervisor said it doesn’t list those numbers.
“How do you decide if something’s excessive, or what?” Adams asked. “Is there anybody to safeguard that and say ‘That’s too many miles?’”
“Sure,” Cook replied. “All you guys out there, for one. Along with me.”
Adams asked Clerk Stacy Phillips if she receives $100 per month in mileage payments. She said she doesn’t receive that much.
Cook said the amount paid in mileage money to township officials “depends on the month.”
“What meetings you have to attend, where you have to go, how many trips to the bank or the post office, or the courthouse, or the attorney’s office,” Cook said. “That’s variable. I usually turn (a mileage total) in every two months, of some kind. I don’t turn in all my miles.”
“I turn one in every three months,” Treasurer Kilmer said, adding “I don’t think it’s excessive.”
Adams said he wasn’t alleging that, but wants to know how residents may determine how many miles township officials drive, and the amounts of their mileage reimbursements.
“Usually you would find out on each audit report at that month’s (regular) township meeting,” Cook said. “The expense reimbursement would tell you.”