COURIER POST: Outgoing Winslow Democrats award contracts to contributor

UNofficially Winslow notes:

The Courier-Post article below notes quotes from the official audio recording of the Winslow Township meeting. UNofficially Winslow has previously posted audio clips from the same meeting. While the audio clips are still available on this website, right below the Courier-Post story, the audio is from UNofficially Winslow's own sources and not the so called official recording. The UNofficial version was recorded live at the same meeting.


Tuesday, December 13, 2005

By ERIK SCHWARTZ
Courier-Post Staff

WINSLOW
On Election Night, the Winslow Democrats doused their sorrows with $1,900 worth of drinks and dinner at Filomena's in Berlin Township after losing a single race that will swing control of Winslow's government to the Republicans.

Municipal engineer Robert L. Churchill paid the bill, the latest in a series of checks he or his firm has written to the township Democrats, totaling more than $93,000 since 2003, records show.

Two weeks later, the departing Democratic majority on the Winslow Township Committee awarded him four contracts worth $616,000 in the face of vehement opposition from the Republicans. The township has paid Churchill's firm $2.1 million this year and $1.9 million last year, records show.

Deputy Mayor Barbara Holcomb, the Democratic leader, defended the awards, citing critical infrastructure needs.

"To delay them in my mind is criminal," Holcomb said at a Nov. 22 Township Committee meeting. "To delay them to the first of the year for other appointments for other engineers to have to come in and do reviews and get brought up to speed and take time . . . that would be irresponsible for us."

Holcomb did not return calls Monday; her comments were transcribed from the official audio recording of the meeting.

The new work, on sewer projects and a park, would not take place until 2006, when the township engineer won't be Churchill, according to Mayor Sue Ann Metzner, leader of the incoming GOP majority.

Metzner questioned the legality of using bond money to pay for sewer projects different from those originally intended without securing the Township Committee's approval for a bond amendment. A bond amendment requires six votes out of nine.

"Yet we were denied the ability . . . to get advice from the bond counsel before they took this action," she said in an interview. "I think that's unconscionable."

In a series of party-line 5-4 votes, the Democrats turned back the Republicans' efforts to delay the contracts. The resolutions passed by the same votes. Holcomb later requested an opinion from bond counsel on the sewer projects.

During the Township Committee meeting, Committeeman Al Cooper called the awards to a campaign contributor "the elephant in the room . . . The four projects are political paybacks," he said, according to the audio recording.

Holcomb, who is vice chairwoman of the Camden County Democratic Committee, disputed that allegation: "I do take offense to that . . . elephant remark. I sat here . . . back in 1996 and there was a change in majority, and I saw so much stuff get rammed through that it was ridiculous, and I said that was something I would never do. And now here we are . . ."

"Doing it," Cooper interjected.

Holcomb listed "an abundance of contracts that we could have come here tonight to try to . . . put through. But what's before you tonight is something that's been in every engineering report for the last couple of years."

She cited a recent sewer break that cost Winslow some $500,000 to repair and called the new work "critical to the operation of our sewer system."

Resident Janet Polhill, 39, said she supported the Democrats in elections and on this issue. "If they did it, it must be OK," she said.

Reach Erik Schwartz at (856) 486-2904 or eschwartz@courierpostonline.com