Township Government out of control!
Pleasant Township wages are $150,000, 45% of the township’s budget! (a)
White River Township allocates $10,000 for a non-existent July 4 celebration! (a)
Union Township’s tax rate: 0.00%!
Franklin Township’s budget for wages and benefits increased 11% between 2008 and 2009! (a)
The numbers keep rolling over you until you brain goes numb, but in the end you can only come to one conclusion: It’s time to eliminate township government in Indiana. For the last 18 months three White River Township residents, Forrest Mellott, John Griffin and Mark DeVoe, have examined records of the nine Johnson County townships and have uncovered some startling information. (a)
Townships have a very tiny purpose.
There are two reasons that townships exist:
1) Maintain abandoned cemeteries
2) Provide assistance for those in need
Government brings more government
Of course once you have a “unit of government,” it is going to expand. Find more things to spend your money on. It happens in Washington and it happens in our townships. We can see this when we compare the total budget for a township to the amount spent on its two primary duties. Let’s call it the township’s Efficiency. For example, if the total budget is $100 and they spend $10 on cemeteries and assistance, then they would be 10% efficient.
Fortunately, none of the townships were that inefficient, but some seemed to be shooting for that target. Here’s the efficiency of the nine townships:
|
Township |
Budget |
Efficiency |
| White River |
$404,800 |
12.4% |
| Pleasant |
$344,600 |
30.8% |
| Franklin |
$333,700 |
39.0% |
| Union |
$90,000 |
32.9% |
| Blue River |
$106,000 |
59.5% |
| Needham |
$52,000 |
51.0% |
| Hensley |
$30,800 |
49.0% |
| Clark |
$30,900 |
43.8% |
| Nineveh |
$35,300 |
34.0% |
What more needs to be said? What’s going on White River Township? How can you spend less than 13% of your budget on essential services? On the other hand, Blue River should be commended for being the most efficient township government spending nearly 60% on the two primary goals for township government.
Somebody’s got to be paid.
It’s unreasonable to expect people to work for nothing, but it is very reasonable to wonder how many people it takes to do the work of the township. While all townships have a Trustee and a Board, others have positions such as First Deputy Assistant Trustee, Investigator, Clerk, and Case Worker. You can see the budgets above, here are the total wages and benefits and the percent of budget they represent.
|
Township |
Wage & Benefits |
% of Budget |
| White River |
$98,580 |
24.3% |
| Pleasant |
$150,600 |
45.0% |
| Franklin |
$100,400 |
31.7% |
| Union |
$9,000 |
7.4% |
| Blue River |
$23,00 |
22.0% |
| Needham |
$15,600 |
30.7% |
| Hensley |
$9,300 |
23.4% |
| Clark |
$10,200 |
32% |
| Nineveh |
- |
- |
Pay myself or do my job?
Just a few more numbers to set the stage. With such a limited set or responsibilities, I’d expect that generally it should not cost much to administer the benefits. You might be surprised. Let’s look at the numbers.
|
Township |
Wage & Benefits |
Services |
% of Budget |
| White River |
$98,580 |
$50,000 |
196.6% |
| Pleasant |
$150,600 |
$100,500 |
149.8% |
| Franklin |
$100,400 |
$127,000 |
79.1% |
| Union |
$9,000 |
$32,000 |
28.3% |
| Blue River |
$23,00 |
$62,000 |
37.1% |
| Needham |
$15,600 |
$26,000 |
59.9% |
| Hensley |
$9,300 |
15,100 |
61.6% |
| Clark |
$10,200 |
$9,500 |
107.7% |
| Nineveh |
- |
- |
- |
In the next couple of days we’ll have an article that looks more closely at White River Township’s budget. Where is the money being spent? Can we track where the money went? Has the Trustee been as careful with our tax dollars as he claims? We’ll look into that in the next article.
This report was written by Dann Veldkamp and the choice of examples and opinions are his responsibility. You can find copies of the original document by following these links:
a) Township,Government Budget Study, November 2008
b) Merger study final tab should be $18,ooo
c) Invoices from accountant & lawyer for Merger Study – 2009
d) WRT accounting & legal fees 2007, 2008, 2009
e) WRT: Citizen Request Audit
f) WRT: Citizen Request: 2010 budget
g) WRT Trustee Financial Summary
h) Johnson County Tax Payment to WRT
i) WRT Financial Report Discrepancies, 2008 – 2009
j) WRT Tax Distributions
No related posts.
5 Responses to “Township Government out of control!”
I for one am grateful to Jay Marks for spending WRT money to provide an independent study of the merger. The peaches and cream story we got from the merger committee was obviously too good to be true but who had facts and figures to provide the basis for questioning? Marks came through for the Township in this one and I am very grateful.
Comment made on May 1st, 2010 at 1:51 pmI have to agree with Mr. Siefker. Had an official in office not challenged the information the citizens were being provided by the merger committee we would have even less information than we do now.
Comment made on May 2nd, 2010 at 4:09 pmI feel the appropriate stance for the Advisory Board would have been to tell the merger committee, “when you have facts and figures for our township citizens to absorb, come back and we will listen.” Until then we will not vote to put this on the ballot…there is too little information for people to make an informed decision.
Mr. Messick, Mr. Eckert and of course Mr. Ackard failed to show representation for the township.
This morning at my church’s coffee hour, a former state senator told me that, while every other unit of local government is trying to cover the cost of essential services, townships all over the state have huge surpluses of cash. It’s time to reform and streamline local government and the first step should be the elimination of townships. They might have made sense in the 19th Century when they had lots of functions (eg. public education) but today they do nothing but encourage “featherbedding” and waste money. When I was in the legislature we repealed the full crew law which required that all trains (even those not powered by coal) have firemen in the cabs as they crossed the state. Of course, the firemen wanted to keep the job with no duties. In spite of the problem it created for them, I voted to repeal the law. It’s now time to do the same to all of township government.
Comment made on May 2nd, 2010 at 11:36 pmI am amazed that after all this time, people do not understand how the merger law works in this state.
The merger committee turned in such a bad plan that spending a single dollar, much less $20,000 far too early in the process, was wasteful.
It’s too bad that the trustee couldn’t have trumpted his role in selling a $1.2 million dollar property for $250,000 as loudly as he fought the merger. The Bantam Football League hadn’t been a non-profit for 18 years and had to re-apply with the state in order to buy the property.
Comment made on May 2nd, 2010 at 11:44 pmI suspect that even if Mr. Marks had sold the bantam property for $1.2mill, it would have done the taxpayers no good. He would have just banked the cash and continued to ask for the maximum tax levy. That is what happened to the cash that was saved when the Admin Building was sold. Unless cash accumulated by the Trustee translates to a reduction in the property tax rate there is no benefit to the residents of WRT.
Comment made on May 3rd, 2010 at 5:45 pmLeave a Comment