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| Lower Southampton supervisors |
A half-dozen residents Wednesday night urged Lower Southampton supervisors to take a “deeper dive” into its zoning and building department operations after a two-year look back found “irregularities,” but most board members said they first want to look at the cost of such an undertaking.
Supervisor Kim Koutsouradis offered a motion to authorize Keystone Municipal Services to conduct an analysis of project records going back to 2002 — the same year that now retired zoning officer Carol Drioli assumed the job — for any project more than $25,000. But the motion died for lack of a second.
“We owe it to our township to know what the hell is going on,” Koutsouradis said.
Newly appointed zoning officer William Oettinger estimated the township lost $37,000 in fees it would have otherwise collected if projects had gone through the proper land development approval process.
Township officials Wednesday night did not reveal how much it has cost taxpayers to hire a third-party consultant to do electric, plumbing, energy, mechanical and accessibility plan reviews and inspections or when the outside company was hired. The hiring was necessary because the current in-house building inspector is not certified in those areas as required under law.
Oettinger added that his office is now going “backwards” with applicants who received building permits improperly without first obtaining land development approval to require them to go through the process retroactively. His office is also taking steps to implement the recommendations in the Keystone report, but that it’s going to take a while.
“I will say this, it isn’t going to be corrected overnight,” he said.
Earlier this year the supervisors authorized spending $5,000 for Keystone to review a sample of subdivision and land development plans and building and zoning permit applications. The review was ordered to examine the department’s processes and procedures, verify compliance with state codes and identify any improvements that could be made.
Chairman Keith Westley repeatedly reminded the audience of about 30 people that the supervisors were under no obligation to do the review, but did so to see where improvements could be made.
The company reviewed seven subdivision and land development applications and 19 zoning and building permit applications between 2015 and last year. Oettinger estimates the township receives 2,500 to 3,500 permit applications annually.
Keystone Municipal Services President Richard O’Brien attended the board meeting to provide an overview of the 12-page report, which found poor record-keeping, missing land development plans, missing inspector signatures and inconsistencies between documents in some project files.
O’Brien added that he did not see any “maleficence” that occurred, though the township did violate the state Municipal Planning Code when it approved permits in 2015 for the construction of a three-story office building in the 500 block of Bustleton Avenue without first requiring the applicant to get land development approval.
The report noted Keystone also discovered a second two-story office building currently under construction on the same property was also issued permits without the same applicant going through the land development approval process.
Drioli attended the meeting Wednesday and initially attempted to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting but was asked to hold her questions until the agenda item. She said that she had questions about the report findings and added she had not seen the report. She did not speak after O’Brien’s presentation and declined to comment after the meeting.
O’Brien said the main irregularity with the subdivision and land development plans was the lack of recorded plans located in the property file. After the meeting he said that applications and recorded plans were filed separately. Among Keystone’s recommendation is that those items be kept with the property file.
Westley asked O’Brien if the problems found in the records were considered common mistakes.
O’Brien replied the short answer was yes, but volume “were a little more than you want to see.”
The report’s main recommendation is the township should hire experienced support for Oettinger, who is also the township’s fire marshal. Westley acknowledged the board may have to hire a part-time or full-time employee in the zoning department.
Residents urged the supervisors to dig deeper into the department’s previous operations to see if there was any pattern to the irregularities. Westley said the issue will be discussed at the next supervisor workshop meeting.
Westley replied that there are things the board wants to address, but that it needed to look at costs of a deeper report. Supervisor Joe McFadden suggested an internal review might be possible rather than paying an outside consultant.
“We want to see how far it goes,” resident Scott Russell said. “The residents want you to go deeper.”
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