{"id":16794,"date":"2015-08-10T10:15:41","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T14:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=16794"},"modified":"2015-08-10T10:15:41","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T14:15:41","slug":"letter-plenty-of-sunshine-in-kennett-township","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=16794","title":{"rendered":"Letter: Plenty of sunshine in Kennett Township"},"content":{"rendered":"

To The Editor,<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Letters1\"<\/a>As the most recently elected Kennett Township Supervisor, and I am responding to Chief McCarthy\u2019s retirement agreement and some residents’ statements and concerns about transparency in Kennett Township.<\/span><\/p>\n

I want to review the\u00a0<\/span>publically<\/span>\u00a0available information regarding the agreement signed on May 6, 2015 by Chief McCarthy.\u00a0 There was a news article (Chester County Press, May 15, 2015) in which, when asked, Lisa Moore was quoted that the contract was to pay Chief McCarthy unused vacation time, 6 months\u2019 salary and medical benefits for a year upon his retirement.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

An individual using a right-to-know request, which was honored by Kennett Township, was sent the agreement.\u00a0 As soon as a possible issue with the agreement was brought to the attention of the Kennett Township Board of Supervisors, a public meeting was held (our 4<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span>\u00a0public Board of Supervisors meeting of July), lengthy discussion and votes ensued, and the agreement under discussion was made public on the Township\u2019s website that very evening (https:\/\/kennett.pa.us\/blog\/2015\/07\/29\/chief-mccarthy-retirement-agreement\/<\/span><\/a>).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since Scudder Stevens became chair of the Board of Supervisors of Kennett Township in 2014, we have had more transparency than ever before in Kennett Township.\u00a0\u00a0We now have the Township Checkbook online for all to see (https:\/\/kennett.pa.us\/check-register\/<\/span><\/a>) and have robust and open discussions at public meetings of the Board of Supervisors.\u00a0\u00a0We notify the public of Executive Sessions and do our best to be as open as possible with topics we are permitted to discuss.\u00a0\u00a0As a reminder, prior to 2014:\u00a0\u00a0a supposed Township-hired auditor could not be found, Township finances were kept from the public under the guise of being a HIPPA violation, public questions at Board of Supervisor meetings were often met with ridicule, not answered, and once even resulted in having an ex-supervisor escorted from a public meeting by the Township police officer<\/span><\/p>\n

Contrast those actions with the prior administration\u2019s appeal of a right-to-know request to continue to hide the Township finances behind a supposed health privacy concern related to HIPAA, and it is clear that Kennett Township now has much more sunshine than it ever did before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Richard Leff<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kennett Township Supervisor<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To The Editor, As the most recently elected Kennett Township Supervisor, and I am responding to Chief McCarthy\u2019s retirement agreement and some residents’ statements and concerns about transparency in Kennett Township. I want to review the\u00a0publically\u00a0available information regarding the agreement signed on May 6, 2015 by Chief McCarthy.\u00a0 There was a news article (Chester County […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[440,183,36],"class_list":["post-16794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-albert-mccarthy","tag-board-of-supervisors","tag-kennett-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}