Wysox Supervisors hire full-time employee to manage the township
Review Photo/JAMES LOEWENSTEIN Wysox Township supervisor Gary Foster, center, looks over M.R. Dirt Inc.'s bid to do repairs on Fall Run Road. Looking on are, at left, supervisor Jon Kulick and township solicitor Scott Pellinger.
WYSOX TOWNSHIP - The Wysox Township supervisors on Tuesday hired a full-time employee to manage the township, and also announced that extensive work on Glen and Dry Run roads, which were damaged in Tropical Storm Lee, has been completed.
While the new hire, Kurt Lafy of Sheshequin Township, was originally going to be called the township manager, he will instead be the township secretary, treasurer and zoning officer, according to Jon Kulick, chairman of the Wysox Township supervisors.
However, Lafy will have the same duties he would have had if he had been hired as the township manager, Kulick said.
Kulick will work 40 hours per week for the township.
To hire Lafy as the township manager, the supervisors would have needed to create and pass an ordinance, and the supervisors did not want to spend the time to do that, Kulick said.
"We needed someone to get right on it (start the job right away), and he (Lafy) has experience," Kulick said.
Lafy is currently serving as the Monroe Borough zoning officer, a job that he is resigning to work for Wysox Township.
Kulick said he will also resign from the other job he currently holds, which is a insurance surveyor.
Lafy said he will be devoting himself fully to his new position.
"They certainly need someone full-time in this position," he said.
Until now, the township has not had an employee who worked full-time to manage the township's affairs.
Lafy will replace township secretary/treasurer Jim Ward, who is retiring, and the current township zoning officer, Amanda Cooley of Code Inspections Inc. Cooley's contract with the township runs out in the next couple of months.
Kulick said he was not sure what Lafy's salary will be. Kulick said that one of the township supervisors, Bill Shoemaker, had that information, but was not at Tuesday's meeting, due to health problems.
Supervisor Gary Foster announced that Chesapeake Energy Corp. had donated the materials to repair Glen and Dry Run roads, and that the repairs on those roads had been done by the township employees.
Glen Road, which had been impassible since Tropical Storm Lee, is now passable again, Foster said.
He said that the estimated cost of the repairs for Glen Road and Dry Run Road had been $404,000.
By having the township do the repairs with donated materials "probably saved us $400,000," Foster said.
The supervisors also accepted a $33,634 bid from M.R. Dirt Inc. of Towanda to make repairs to Fall Run Road, including installing a 20-foot sluice pipe.
M.R. Dirt's bid was very close to the state estimate, and was the lowest of four bids that were submitted to do the work, Foster noted.
While the supervisors had discussed using Florida-based Scion Management Solutions to prepare the paperwork to get reimbursement from FEMA and PEMA for the work on Glen, Dry Run, and Fall Run roads, the supervisors decided not to hire the firm to do that.
Scion would have charged $18,000 per week, and the supervisors had doubts as to whether the company could make the Jan. 12 deadline to submit the paperwork, Kulick said.
The supervisors were also unsure whether FEMA would reimburse the township for Scion's fee and did not know for sure whether there would be any reimbursement for the road projects.
Even if FEMA and PEMA did reimburse the township for the work on Glen and Dry Run roads, the township would probably still have had to pay more than $100,000 of the cost to have a private company repair those two roads, Foster said.
Having the township repair Glen and Dry Run roads using donated materials was a much cheaper way to do the work, he said.
James Loewenstein can be reached at (570) 265-1633; or email: jloewenstein@thedailyreview.com.
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