Citizens at a recent St. Clair Township board budget meeting who spoke out in support of the township employing four road department employees instead of five received praise from Republican House candidate Katherine Ruocco.
Ruocco, who is vying for the District 113 House seat, applauded the citizens for choosing to actively engage in the discussion about the township budget.
The board ultimately decided to honor its budget constraint and allocate more money for road construction instead of hiring a fifth employee as St. Clair Township Highway Commissioner Skip Kernan advocated for the 2016-17 fiscal year.
“(The) St. Clair Township meeting, great example of citizens Steven Duff and Robert M. Goins taking an active role in the management of their tax dollars!” Ruocco wrote on her Facebook page. “Reminding the St. Clair Township Highway Commissioner that you can't spend more money than you have. A good lesson for Springfield.”
Ruocco posted the message next to a photo taken at the budget meeting in which one person held up a sign that read, “My grandkids understand NO!!”
Township Supervisor Dave Barnes and Trustees Mary Carroll, Jaynie Wells and Keith Sturgis voted in favor of hiring four employees while Trustee Greg Hipskind voted against it.
Hipskind told Belleville News-Democrat that the township needed a fifth employee because there is plenty of work that needs to be done and reducing the number of employees is not going to be beneficial to the people.
A week before the board vote, the township’s five highway employees were laid off after trustees refused to grant Kernan’s request to transfer money from a road construction line item into a wages line item for the 2015-16 budget. The wages line item had run out of money before the end of the fiscal year that ended on March 31.
During the budget meeting, Kernan said it was clear to him that “there has been a deliberate act of sabotage going on to eliminate the St. Clair road district.”
“As you are aware, the five employees are no longer out doing what you, the taxpayer, pay them to do,” Kernan said in a video clip showing footage of the meeting.
With one less employee to pay, the trustees opted to set aside approximately $550,000 for road construction instead.
Carroll told Belleville News-Democrat that she believes taxpayers would prefer to have their roads repaired rather than swept.
Ruocco ran unopposed in the Republican primary and will challenge incumbent Jay Hoffman in the November election.
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