Not ready to share: Ewing tables mayor’s plan

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

By JOAN GALLER
Staff Writer
EWING — A proposed 10-year shared services agreement between the township and the Board of
Education to maximize services and cut costs was tabled last night by a 3-1 vote of the Township
Council.

Voting along party lines, the Democratic majority put the plan of Republican Mayor Jack Ball in the deep
freeze indefinitely after Councilman Les Summiel called for “further discussion,” which was seconded by
his fellow Democratic Councilman Joe Murphy, who wanted to know “what the township would get.”

The move came one day after Ball and the school board president, Jonathan Savage, presented the
agreement and spoke about its merits during the council’s agenda meeting on Monday night.

“We’re shocked that it was tabled, and I’m very disappointed,” Ball said after last night’s meeting.

The mayor said that he and Township Attorney Michael Hartsough had worked with School Supt.
Raymond Broach to create the agreement.

For decades, township and school officials have swapped favors that proved beneficial to local residents,
but 1995 was the last time there was a written agreement for such reciprocity.

Hartsough said the Ball administration had presented everything to the council in advance, and there was
no indication on Monday night that anyone had a problem with the proposal.

The joint endeavor would focus on ways to save money through recycling, a recycling education program,
refuse disposal, police resource officers assigned to schools by the police chief, the supply of fuel, use of
athletic fields and gymnasiums by township residents, and grant applications.

Hartsough dissected key items in the plan and noted that the school board pays $45,000 in annual
overtime for janitors and others to keep open the schools and recreation fields for the use of township
residents.

The plan calls for the board to pay $100,000, in $20,000 installments over five years, for a light truck for
the township to haul away school trash, Hartsough said, noting the township’s current truck “is at the end
of its life.”

The township, in return, is paying $15,000 towards gasoline for the school board’s vehicles, and would
seek grant funds to pay for a recycling education program to increase paper recycling at the schools.
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