{"id":4675,"date":"2012-08-22T17:36:40","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T21:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=4675"},"modified":"2012-08-22T17:36:40","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T21:36:40","slug":"kennett-residents-petition-for-restoration-of-work-sessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=4675","title":{"rendered":"Kennett residents petition for restoration of work sessions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents argue cancelled meetings should come back, board defers decision<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/strong>By P.J. D\u2019Annunzio, <\/strong>Staff Writer, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Kennett Township building used to host midday work sessions of the Board of Supervisors, but the sessions were suspended by a voter of the board. More than 100 residents filed a petition asking them to be reinstated.<\/p><\/div>\n

KENNETT \u2014 During Monday night\u2019s Kennett Township Board of Supervisors meeting a petition signed by 109 Township residents to reinstate the cancelled monthly work sessions was presented to Supervisors’ Chairman Michael Elling.<\/p>\n

Township resident Mike Gutman, who presented the petition to Elling, suggested that the board take a vote to bring the work sessions back into operation, however, Elling \u2014 Along with Supervisor Bob Hammaker\u2014 said that not having a chance to review the petition left them unable to render a vote.<\/p>\n

Supervisor Scudder Stevens commented to his colleagues that the elimination of the work sessions has created an overload of business to be dealt with during the monthly BOS meetings, and their reinstatement could prove more beneficial in expediting township procedures.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the work sessions were unilaterally cancelled by the chairman without the vote of the board, these meetings have gone on for hours and we still have significant business left to do \u2014 now we typically go until 10 o\u2019clock or 10:30. There\u2019s a lot of business that needs to be taken care of and we\u2019re not getting around to being able to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese work sessions have been very important in the past because they allowed a lot of work to be taken care of and in a meaningful way; even though they were done during the day and a lot of people couldn\u2019t attend\u2026I make the motion that we institute the work sessions as suggested in the petition for a six month period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elling suggested that the board table the motion until next month, claiming \u201chopefully we\u2019ll have some more responses\u201d from township residents.<\/p>\n

When township residents asked Elling what an appropriate number of signees or interested individuals would be he responded, saying, \u201cWe\u2019ve had these work sessions during the day and they tailed off with nobody coming. We tried late afternoon meetings for six months and no one came. Not enough for us to make the effort. We\u2019re going to let it go at this time until next month.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we want to see is more enthusiasm from a wider group,\u201d he elaborated. \u201cNotwithstanding [Gutman\u2019s] efforts to get these petitions\u2014and I applaud him for doing it\u2014but people sign petitions very often without even knowing what they\u2019re signing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very pejorative statement to the people that took the time to sign their names to something that they think is important,\u201d Stevens said in response to Elling\u2019s evaluation. \u201cTo suggest that they just dashed it off\u2014you haven\u2019t even looked at it to know what it says.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several residents suggested that a trial run of evening work sessions be implemented for a six month period to see if attendance would grow to a level satisfactory to the Chairman. Still, the motion was tabled and the ultimate fate of Kennett Township\u2019s work sessions will remain undecided until the September supervisors meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Residents argue cancelled meetings should come back, board defers decision By P.J. D\u2019Annunzio, Staff Writer, The Times KENNETT \u2014 During Monday night\u2019s Kennett Township Board of Supervisors meeting a petition signed by 109 Township residents to reinstate the cancelled monthly work sessions was presented to Supervisors’ Chairman Michael Elling. Township resident Mike Gutman, who presented […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[183,36,1024,1023],"class_list":["post-4675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-board-of-supervisors","tag-kennett-township","tag-petition","tag-work-sessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4675","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}