Springfield Township has a new treasurer, but the appointment didn’t come without some controversy.<br /><br />The Springfield Township Board of Commissioners appointed current township tax collector Bonny S. Davis as township treasurer, during the March 12 meeting. While the board voted in a 3-2 decision not to compensate Davis for her new position, it is willing to revisit the issue in the future if need be. Board members Jeffrey Harbison and Peter Wilson voted against the decision, while board members Baird Standish and Robert Gillies were absent.<br /><br />“In 2012, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania amended the first class township code in order to separate the duties of the township tax collector from the township treasurer,” said President James Dailey. “The elected tax collector is responsible to invoice and collect real estate taxes and may collect local enabling taxes, such as the business privilege and mercantile tax. The newly created office of appointed township treasurer will accept the funds from the township tax collector, as well as other funds collected by the township, to be deposited in the township’s designated depository. The appointed township treasurer will continue to perform all other functions of the office as in previous years, including maintaining records as to receipts from taxes and other sources of income, presenting the information from audits [and] enacting as a signatory on all monies paid out by the township. To separate the duties of the elected town tax collector and appointed treasurer, the commonwealth has also permitted, but not required, municipalities to compensate the appointed treasurer separately from services rendered.”<br /><br />During the Jan. 6 reorganization meeting, the board deferred the appointment of a township treasurer until it could understand all of the details of the new legislation, including compensation, and research how other neighboring townships were handling the new position. Davis, in the meantime, performed both duties during the deferment period.<br /><br />“So we saw from the report that Upper Dublin had established compensation for the treasurer,” Wilson said. “I think it was $3,000 per year. We saw that Cheltenham has established compensation for the treasurer that’s $5,000 a year. There was another township that was contemplating compensation but [it] hadn’t finalized the compensation. I think looking at the legislation that the spirit of this, while it was a little opaque, truly was to give townships the opportunity to change the compensation structure that had been in place for so many decades — to try to make it a little fairer on the treasurer/tax collector. So I think asking somebody to do another job for zero compensation is not only unfair, unethical but I think it’s just wrong.”<br /><br />Wilson suggested paying the treasurer somewhere between $3,000 to $5,000 annually.<br /><br />“As I considered the position, I think Ms. Davis is doing a great job in the position,” said board member Tom Bell, “that’s a voluntary and elected position in this township … I look at it more as a public service. I ran for the position years ago. I would like to see future boards stick with appointing the elected tax collector as our treasurer as well. To counter what Peter [Wilson] said, I don’t think it’s unfair. Ms. Davis ran on her own volition, and she was duly elected and the tax collector and the treasurer — I don’t think there’s any additional work that has to be done.”<br /><br />“At this time I’m not in favor of adding any compensation to this,” said board member Glenn Schaum. “I’m not opposed to looking at it in the future. But I think we’ve used the word legislative intent around this every time this is mentioned; it’s the legislative intent to find a way to compensate the tax collector for the treasurer’s job. Truly, if compensation was the sole purpose, I’ve not really read it that the legislative intent was to compensate, but truly wouldn’t they have gone back and looked at the 1945 ordinance that says what the tax collector, the maximum allowed, that a first class township can pay the tax collector? If truly it was about salary, they should go back and say, ‘Hey, maybe in 1945 $10,000 was good, but in 2014 it’s not.’ Not to take a back door approach and say well, we’re going to split the job. And it was the job that Bonny [Davis] signed on for, and every tax collector prior to last year, signed on for when they were elected.”<br /><br />Dailey said as president he tries to build some type of consensus, adding he had to agree with Schaum that there wasn’t any legislative intent. He also said he believed the roles of the township tax collector and the township treasurer were dependent upon each other.<br /><br />“I see the duties as being intertwined,” he said. “I don’t see them changing.” <br /><br />Dailey said in response to the suggestion of paying the treasurer $5,000, “That is a 50 percent increase of the $10,000 we pay now. So I don’t know what position you would raise 50 percent.”<br /><br />Last year, before the position was split, the township, according to Dailey, paid a salary of $10,000, office expenses of $5,000, sewer collection of $11,500, refuse collection $14,429 “which comes to $40,885 of compensation that we paid for the office of township tax collector.”<br /><br />“That’s not including any type of compensation from the school district and the county … also not included is the amount the tax collector would get for certification, which I believe is $35 apiece,” he said. “In one of the letters that I got from Ms. Davis years ago, it mentioned that 300 tax certifications were done in one year upon appointment, which is another $10,000. So as far as compensation, I’m looking at it, to give an additional, even if you took [just] the $40,000, a $5,000 increase would be something like 12 or 15 percent, which again, I think is relatively high. So I truly feel that the office of the township tax collector is compensated adequately.”<br /><br />Later, Davis said she was happy to continue serving both positions, agreeing with Bell that it is a public service and she didn’t want to let down the public. She said she hoped the board might revisit the issue in the future if circumstances change.