More Financial Shuffling at West Deptford Committee Meeting

The West Deptford municipal government bid farewell to two of its own on Thursday evening, as Committeewoman Donna Szymborski and Deputy Mayor Sean Kilpatrick thanked the township in the final meeting of their elected terms.

Mayor Ray Chintall even gave Kilpatrick the ceremonial courtesy of presiding over the affairs of the committee, which, for a third consecutive meeting, focused extensively on financial line-item transfers, as the body sought to close out the calendar year without running over budget on essential services.

Dollars in, dollars out

At the November 7 meeting, the committee attempted to shuffle some dollars into line items from which it had withdrawn funds only four months earlier, but the vote on the transfer failed for want of a majority. 

The resolution that day would have put $142,000 into solid waste collection, for example, a figure that was reduced to $125,000 in the measure that passed two weeks later. The final draft of the budget in July had cut $75,000 from that same line item.

Prior to the significant winter weather that struck West Deptford nearly three weeks ago, the township had chopped 60 percent of its snow removal dollars (down from $168,366 to $68,366) from the budget. 

Township Administrator Eric Campo said the government had expended close to $50,000 "by the end of this week, counting Tuesday’s salting" on those services.

On Thursday, the committee added an additional $10,000 for snow removal, as well as $20,000 for engineering services (a line item that had been cut by $50,000 just two weeks ago), $10,000 for recycling (which had been cut by $6,000 November 21), and $4,000 for the prosecutor's office (which had been cut by $5,000 November 21).

'Are we sure we're not going to over-expend?'

Democratic Committeewoman Denice DiCarlo called into question the process at work behind the additional transfers, asking CFO Brenda Sprigman whether the township was at risk of running out of money in any line item before the end of the year.

“We’re transferring money out of all these departments,” DiCarlo said. “Are we sure we’re not going to over-expend?

“When I get this at a very high level, and I’m not saying you haven’t done a lot of work, it makes me uncomfortable,” DiCarlo said.

Sprigman said the recycling money was put in to cover the cab and chassis of a recycling vehicle; the engineering dollars were to cover “a bill I was not aware of,” and the public defender money was “an oversight.”

“That certainly can happen in the normal course of budgeting,” Campo told Patch after the meeting. “Regardless of where the CFO needs to make these transfers from, or how much, the real issue is that the original appropriation numbers are what I’ve complained about, which is what’s causing the need for the transfers. 

"The budget amendments that went through this year, I objected to and others objected to, as being arbitrary and not being in line with what our actual expenditures are," he said. 

"If you cut things too low, you don’t have reserves, which means you have less flexibility. I don’t believe the budget appropriation cuts that were made were sound."

'I think we did a responsible budgeting process'

Republican Committeeman Sam Cianfarini, who declined to comment directly to Patch, downplayed the significance of the transfers to another reporter in the room after the meeting.

“Look at the magnitude of the back and forth," Cianfarini was overheard to say. "Every municipality does this. I don’t even see how it’s newsworthy.”

When challenged by a resident as to whether the township had reserved enough dollars for snow removal in its budget process during the public comment portion of the meeting, Cianfarini defended his budget as “not bare-bones. 

"Other areas of the budget were not cut as far as that particular line item was," Cianfarini remarked. "We left the room in different areas where we felt at the time it was needed. I think we did a responsible budgeting process.”

“You can’t foresee everything in every single line item,” Kilpatrick added.

More money for financial consultants

The committee also raised its cap of available dollars for the financial services of PM Consultants to assist in the final build-out of the township financial software.

West Deptford made available an additional $20,000 for that purpose, bringing the total amount expended to a theoretical maximum of $70,000.

The additional dollars were not only necessary, Campo said after the meeting, but were still fewer than those he had asked the committee to budget for the conversion at the beginning of the year.

"I had originally requested back at the beginning of the year that it be set at roughly $100,000," Campo said. "Not only was it capped at the $50[,000], but the timing was to June 30 of this year."

At issue during discussion of the resolution was the question of whether Sprigman may have authorized PM Consultants to perform $12,000 of that work in November before the committee could vote on the expenditure of the funds.

“In the interest of doing what was best for the township, I asked PM Consulting to do some data entry in order for the third quarter to go smoothly, and also for the November tax sale,” Sprigman said.

DiCarlo asked why the approval of an additional $12,000 hadn’t made it to the committee agenda for a vote.

“It was on the draft agenda,” Campo said.

“I think on both your part and my part probably we were not notified of this in time to take any action in November,” said Chintall. 

“Mr. Campo said he put it on a draft agenda. Who removed it?” DiCarlo asked.

“The actual work was done prior to requesting of the additional funds,” said Solicitor Anthony Ogozalek. “Yes, there was a breakdown in process, but I can’t discuss too much further.” 

The consultants estimated an additional 80 hours worth of work will be needed before the end of the calendar year to complete installation of the Edmunds software, Sprigman replied.

“They’re going to be working the last two weeks of the year because it’s not done?” DiCarlo asked.

“They’re still cleaning up the data entry that needs to happen in the tax module,” Sprigman said.