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TEXAS TOWNSHIP — Several township residents and the board of supervisors rallied to the defense of township secretary John Haggarty Monday night for what they seem to think is this newspaper’s unfair treatment of him in our recent weekend edition.
In the story entitled “Texas hold ’em,” we explained that our request for zoning records from Haggarty — the township’s Open Records Officer — has met with incomplete production of the records requested.
In response to a question from a resident as to whether there was any truth to the fact that we quoted board chairman Jack McDonald saying records had gone missing and may have been stolen, McDonald explained that when Wayne Earley was the township’s zoning officer all the township’s business was handled at the Honesdale borough hall.
“Maybe stuff got stolen up at the borough building,” McDonald said. “Stuff got stolen at the borough building. Nothing got stolen here.
“When Earley left Texas Township and went up to the borough he took Junior (Lee Krause Jr. — Earley’s replacement as Texas Township zoning and code enforcement officer) with him to train him. They had files up there and when he got done they were supposed to get a grant and were going to get all the filing cabinets and boy this was going to be beautiful. Well it didn’t work out that way.
“When we got done we brought all the filing cabinets back and put them in (the Texas Township office). There’s not a person here in this board that knows if everything come back (sic), because I don’t know... there’s not a board member here that knows what files went up there, up to the borough building.”
Supervisor Don Doney elaborated by saying when Earley was the zoning officer, “all the office work was done up there,” in Honesdale. He also said Texas Township bought a fire-proof filing cabinet to house the township’s records at the borough building and that Earley didn’t even keep office hours at the township building.
For his part, Haggarty challenged this newspaper’s claim that he has not fulfilled our records request for building and zoning permits for Wal-Mart, the Home Depot, the Wayne County prison and Rusty Palmer’s new building; as well as records of all fees paid to the township and to the zoning officer for those projects.
TEXAS TOWNSHIP — Several township residents and the board of supervisors rallied to the defense of township secretary John Haggarty Monday night for what they seem to think is this newspaper’s unfair treatment of him in our recent weekend edition.
In the story entitled “Texas hold ’em,” we explained that our request for zoning records from Haggarty — the township’s Open Records Officer — has met with incomplete production of the records requested.
In response to a question from a resident as to whether there was any truth to the fact that we quoted board chairman Jack McDonald saying records had gone missing and may have been stolen, McDonald explained that when Wayne Earley was the township’s zoning officer all the township’s business was handled at the Honesdale borough hall.
“Maybe stuff got stolen up at the borough building,” McDonald said. “Stuff got stolen at the borough building. Nothing got stolen here.
“When Earley left Texas Township and went up to the borough he took Junior (Lee Krause Jr. — Earley’s replacement as Texas Township zoning and code enforcement officer) with him to train him. They had files up there and when he got done they were supposed to get a grant and were going to get all the filing cabinets and boy this was going to be beautiful. Well it didn’t work out that way.
“When we got done we brought all the filing cabinets back and put them in (the Texas Township office). There’s not a person here in this board that knows if everything come back (sic), because I don’t know... there’s not a board member here that knows what files went up there, up to the borough building.”
Supervisor Don Doney elaborated by saying when Earley was the zoning officer, “all the office work was done up there,” in Honesdale. He also said Texas Township bought a fire-proof filing cabinet to house the township’s records at the borough building and that Earley didn’t even keep office hours at the township building.
For his part, Haggarty challenged this newspaper’s claim that he has not fulfilled our records request for building and zoning permits for Wal-Mart, the Home Depot, the Wayne County prison and Rusty Palmer’s new building; as well as records of all fees paid to the township and to the zoning officer for those projects.
After reading the wording used in the records request filed by The Wayne Independent, Haggarty said, “I did supply the building permits for Home Depot, the correctional facility and Rusty Palmer’s. I went in the files, whatever was there I made copies of.”
From there, Haggarty challenged TWI’s use of the word “receipts” in the records request, saying, “A receipt to me is, if someone gives me ten dollars, I give them a receipt back that I received ten dollars.
On the building permits, when the fee was paid there’s a block on the building permit where the date the check was received the check amount and the date. That’s a receipt on a building permit. We don’t give receipts for building permits. I get the check from the zoning office, I deposit them in the bank.”
When confronted with the fact that the documents received were incomplete and that Rusty Palmer’s pages took two weeks to show up, Haggarty said that was because Earley had them since he is still working on that project to this day. He did not say why the two building permit files received were incomplete.
Haggarty said he did provide us with records of payments made to the zoning officer for the projects, saying, “I gave them the information on 8 1/2” by 11” paper. Never was it asked for in this request for copies of invoices or canceled checks. But yet in the newspaper article they’re saying I did not supply canceled checks. They never requested them.”
“Everybody’s trying to get something on Texas Township,” McDonald said of the discussion, “Texas, Texas, Texas. Well, other people have been trying than this. We got Rusty... There hasn’t been any proof yet.”
