a credit rating<\/a>, she admitted when questioned by Councilwoman Laura Wentz.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s very sketchy and I\u2019m very concerned about it,\u201d said Wentz.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a little confused as to why this is a resolution and not an ordinance,\u201d said Councilman Matt Silva. \u201cI\u2019m a little apprehensive about this. It creates a wiggle room. You\u2019re saying the cash is currently on hand, and so it\u2019s OK to do it this way?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scuitti said that the township had the money for the $100,000 downpayment and the first-year lease payment of $168,000 in the unrestricted capital reserve fund.<\/p>\n
Township Solicitor Michael Clarke said, \u201cIt\u2019s clear the township is not pledging its taxing authority to make these payments. They are secured by the equipment itself.\u201d The lease obligations are considered \u201coperating expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clarke also noted that his firm had studied the lease agreement and he opined that the council could approve via resolution, rather than an ordinance. He read part of the contact with the bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lease we are entering into, we are not committing the general revenue taxing authority,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you go out and borrow money you are committing the taxing authority to pay back that money\u2026That\u2019s not what we\u2019re doing. The collateral, if we don\u2019t pay on it, they can\u2019t force us to use tax money to pay for it. We would just default on the lease.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeMasi disagreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the township has to do is properly pass an ordinance that allows them to borrow money, as the Home Rule Charter clearly states,\u201d he said. \u201cAn ordinance, as required by the Home Rule Charter, requires the public to have a voice in the borrowing of money by their township.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe township has decided to take an action that is a risk to the firefighters and\u00a0declare that signing a document that has an amortization schedule, the payment of principal and interest does not constitute borrowing money, and therefore the people do not have a voice and they will risk losing the equipment for the firefighters,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Tunis did not respond to requests to comment on DeMasi\u2019s criticism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the firefighters\u2019 union filed a lawsuit against the township to mandate it comply with open records requests regarding fire department financing. That lawsuit remains pending in Common Pleas Court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Linda Stein is a Philadelphia-area journalist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Upper Darby Council voted unanimously by resolution to spend more than $900,000 for a five-year lease agreement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[212,37868,31587,15457,2309,37869,31589,147,2262,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-72660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-delaware-county","tag-diane-scutti","tag-hafiz-tunis","tag-john-demasi","tag-laura-wentz","tag-matt-silva","tag-michael-clarke","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-council","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}