VIEWPOINT / Russell Township Residents

September 25, 2019 by Submitted

Dear Judge Grendell:

We, the undersigned residents of Russell Township, request that the commissioners of the Russell Township Park District be removed from office for financial and administrative incompetence, nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance.

This board of commissioners has failed, two years in a row, to have their budget approved by the County Budget Commission. As a result, the Russell Township Park District cannot be certified to receive public funds and, even though they no longer have their own levy, they would have been eligible to receive local government and library funding had their budget been approved. These funds could have been used to help pay for the inexplicably large ongoing administrative expenses ($42,150 projected for 2020) that this Park District has been incurring for the last couple of years, without explanation to the public through the County Budget Commission.

This year, none of the Russell Township Park District commissioners or their representatives bothered to show up for their scheduled meeting with the Budget Commission on Aug. 19, despite the fact that notice of the meeting was mailed to the Park District and published in local newspapers as required by law. The Russell Township Park District failed to appear before the Budget Commission at their scheduled time.

According to local newspaper reports, Park Board President Dennis Suhay called the morning of the Budget Commission meetings to ask that the meeting be postponed until the next day, Aug. 20, but the Budget Commission was already in session, could not meet the next day and, even if they could have met, could not have given the required public notice of a meeting rescheduled for the next day.

In addition, three (3) individuals from the Park District called on Friday, Aug. 16 to confirm their budget hearing date, time and place.

As Russell taxpayers, we have a right to know how our money is being spent. The Budget Commission exists to protect our taxpayer money, to make sure that public entities’ budgets are accurate and to ask question on behalf of the taxpayers when budgets are inaccurate or don’t make sense. We have been deprived of this protection of our money by the inexcusable failure of the Russell Park Commission to appear before the County Budget Commission.

Last year, the Budget Commission requested that the Russell Township Park District begin to use UAN software to prepare their budget. Between September 2018 and July 2019, well over $20,000 was spent by the Park District for accounting services, including over $6,000 of public money spent for UAN training for the private accountant hired by the Park District. Despite this enormous amount of money spent to train their private accountant to use the UAN software, the budget submitted by the Russell Township Park District to the Budget Commission appears not to have been generated by UAN software. Instead, it looks like an Excel spreadsheet. Yet, in an article in the Chagrin Valley Times on Aug. 29, Dennis Suhay is quoted as saying that the Park District is using UAN. Is he confused, obfuscating or intentionally misrepresenting the facts?

We don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. The complete failure of our park commissioners to familiarize themselves with the UAN system and use it to prepare the budget is an act of nonfeasance at best and malfeasance if intentional.

As taxpayers, we feel that we have been cheated out of thousands of dollars spent on UAN training for the Park District’s accountant.

Looking at the budget, there is a projected expenditure for a land purchase and no mention of a potential tax levy, yet, in the Aug. 29 article, Dennis Suhay said that there was no projected expenditure for land purchases in 2020 and that the commissioners hoped to place a small levy on the ballot. How can the proposed budget be so different from what Mr. Suhay is telling the press? We are baffled by the apparent incompetence and misfeasance.

As the supervising authority, it is your duty to appoint competent commissioners to the Russell Township Park Board and to remove commissioners who are not competent to administer that board and its finances.

It is the duty of the commissioners to develop the annual budget and to establish procedures that ensure that public money is spent in a fiscally responsible manner. By (a) failing to have their budget approved by the County Budget Commission two years in a row, (b) failing to even attend the Budget Commission meeting this year, (c) as a consequence, failing to qualify to receive local government funding, (d) failing to submit a UAN-generated budget, (e) expending substantial sums of money to train the accountant who failed to submit the UAN-generated budget, and (f) then failing to accurately represent these facts to the public through press reports, this board has committed acts of financial and administrative incompetence, nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance that require their removal from office immediately.

Sincerely,

Shelley Chernin
Sharmyn Clark
Jo Fedor
Tony and Susan Festa
Jim Mueller
Susan Slotnick