The Feb. 4 meeting of the Evesham Township Council was one of routine business.
The meeting began with a discussion between township manager William Cromie and the council about the possibility of amending the township’s professional service contract threshold.
Cromie said the threshold currently stands at $10,000, meaning the township manager can award contracts up to that amount for professional services without township council approval. Anything over that limit must go to council.
“During 2013, we found that there were several projects that we had to hold up on because we needed to have a council meeting to get council’s approval,” Cromie said.
According to Cromie, both golf course roof design and inspection and the memorial field playground installation fell behind because of the need to wait for council to approve the contracting of professional services beyond the $10,000 limit. He requested that the amount be raised to $17,500.
Mayor Randy Brown was in favor of raising the limit and asked the township solicitor if that limit could be raised even higher due to its relatively small size compared to the township’s annual budget, but he was informed that $17,500 was the state legal limit.
“I think we have people in the right positions to make the right decisions, and we don’t need to micromanage how we’re spending $8,000,” Brown said.
Councilman Robert DiEnna inquired to exactly what might be covered in the professional service category.
“When you say a professional service, how broad is that?” DiEnna asked.
It was eventually decided that at the next meeting, there would be an ordinance reflecting an amendment to the township’s professional service contract threshold.
Later in the meeting, Deputy Mayor Ken D’Andrea had some concerns concerning a resolution to award the contract for the professional engineering services regarding the 9/11 memorial design at Evesham Fire Station.
The contract specifies an LED sign to be used with the memorial, and D’Andrea felt that LED technology was outdated and instead the sign should use LCD technology.
“If you’re driving on 95 or the turnpike and you see a digital billboard, basically you can program that whole billboard with a little bit of software,” D’Andrea said. “That’s kind of the technology I want, not just little LED lights.”
Council agreed with D’Andrea and decided to remove the LED section of the contract.
Later, DiEnna said he wanted to know if the township manager had any thoughts regarding numerous resolutions to award contracts to positions such as township engineer, township architect, township insurance broker and several others.
“I asked the township manager if we should look at this with concern for sizable increases from last year,” DiEnna said. “As you go down the line and look at the professionals that we hire, do any of the numbers jump off the chart as far as sizable increases?”
Cromie said the professionals in the contracts had listed what they would be using for the year and how they would be billing for their time, and he believed the contracts to be reasonable.
Council then approved resolutions awarding all contracts, including one for the purchase of one tandem axle truck with combination dump body, snowplow and associated equipment.
