Sunday, October 19, 2008 1:32 PM EDT
By Evan Brandt
POTTSTOWN — Although the borough is without a finance director — again — there's no shortage of people who want to replace him.So far, 40 applications for the job have been received, said Timothea Kirchner, a consultant with Reading-based Financial Solutions, the company hired by the borough to help hire a new finance director as well as put the 2009 budget together and prepare for a state-backed overhaul of Pottstown's financial and management structure.These last two tasks have taken the majority of Kirchner's time, she told borough council Oct. 14, but she said she will continue to review the applications.Whichever applicant is successful will find themselves in the midst of a consultant review under the aegis of a state program called the Early Intervention Program.
An initiative of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, the EIP, as it is known, is designed to help struggling municipalities get their financial house in order before disaster hits.Kirchner's firm has been involved with EIP projects in Lancaster and she said the fact that Pottstown will soon undergo this review, which will result in recommendations for making the borough operate more efficiently, is "the good news" in this year's budget process, which is looking to be a gloomy one."It's very good the borough has decided to go through the Early Intervention Program," Kirchner told council. "It will have short and long-term financial and management objectives and its aim is to improve the overall management of the borough."The requests for proposals from financial consulting firms will be "out on the street on Oct. 20," Kirchner said. Responses will be due by Nov. 24."We have an aggressive timeline and we're shooting for the job to be done by July 1, so you can incorporate it into the 2010 budget," she said.One of the places that consultant is likely to focus, Kirchner said, is the borough's finance department.She said the borough's "revolving door" history of finance directors had made it difficult to establish any consistency in approach to policies and practices."In my opinion, the borough manager and the assistant borough manager are in charge and the finance department is there to serve all the departments of the borough," Kirchner said."I think there was a disconnect and we have to take a hard look at who's responsible for what," she said.Council Vice President Greg Berry, who also chairs council's finance committee and championed the acceptance of the DCED grant that will help to pay for the EIP consultant, praised Kirchner's insights."We know there has been mismanagement and financial shell games going in the borough for years and we know that fiscal responsibility has clearly not been occurring over the years," Berry said.What the EIP study will do, Berry said, is three essential things."It's one thing to find these problems, then we have to find a solution and then put practices in place to make sure they don't happen again," he said.
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