Thursday, December 17, 2020

Canton board of trustees approves pay raises

Julie Brown, Special Writer

Members of the Canton Board of Trustees unanimously approved a 2.5 percent raise for merit non-union full-time employees, along with elected township officials, at their Dec. 7 meeting.

The township supervisor, treasurer and clerk hold full-time salaried positions, and will receive the 2.5 percent pay hike.

Supervisor Anne Marie Graham-Hudak, Clerk Michael Siegrist, and Treasurer Dian Slavens were among the “yes” votes on the first raises for elected officials in several years.

Trustee Steven Sneideman noted the new board members had been elected Nov. 3 and their predecessors had turned down raises “for essentially five years. I'm comfortable with it at this time,” he said, and also with a match for other employee units.

Trustee Sommer Foster noted the four part-time trustees receive only nominal pay.

“It becomes quite a jump,” especially for full-time elected officials, Foster said.

Early in 2020, former Canton Supervisor Pat Williams began to study pay for elected officials, due to forgoing of raises by the officials. The vote was unanimous, with Trustee Kate Borninski absent due to her final Plymouth-Canton school board meeting.

Canton trustees, in other business, OK'd 6-0 use of $56,000 at various vendors to furnish the new Fire Station No. 2.

 “This is the exciting part. The station's coming along great and should open this January,” said Director of Fire Services Christopher Stoecklein.

That date doesn't include tearing down of the old station, Stoecklein added.

Finance and Budget Director Wendy Trumbull outlined several changes to the 2020 budget that were unanimously OK'd. The township will spend more on external legal affairs.

“We're actually ending up right where we started for state-shared revenue” in the general fund. A Drug Enforcement Fund for which the township has been a fiduciary is “a bookkeeping item” in its handling, Trumbull said, and a western Wayne consortium with other municipalities on criminal matters “ended and there was money left over.”

Some of that was returned to consortium members, Trumbull said, with the state involved now in dissolution.

Trustees also awarded $41,900 to Wade Trim Associates for work at the Administration Complex/Heritage Park site.A 10 percent contingency was included in that vote.