Village Manager and Clerk remain unable to make payments

By Megan Kelley
Review Writer
 LAKE ORION — During its meeting on May 22, the Lake Orion Village Council heard a request from village Manager Darwin McClary asking council to approve a resolution delegating the authority to make bill payments to the manager and clerk while still allowing oversight from council.
“You would still receive a report at every meeting with the bills. It would be on the consent agenda to receive and file, but you can still pull that report and if you had a concern on a specific bill, you could pull the report, discuss that bill and provide further direction to us as to whether or not you want it paid or not,” McClary said. “Really what it does is it kind of flips the approval process. It assumes that bills are approved unless the council takes action to specifically disapprove payment of a specific bill.”
This request comes after the council voted 3-3 in a deadlock resulting in the council not approving its bills at its meeting on May 8, resulting in several late bill payments and one suspended credit card. The village had its Shell Small Business account suspended after it failed to pay a $30 fuel bill because council did not authorize paying the bills on May 22.
Council President Jerry Narsh made a motion to continue to follow the best practices of the council and keep the authority to pay bills with the council.
“The village council is required to adopt, at each council meeting, the payment of invoices of bills,” said Narsh. “That is the duty and responsibility of the village council.”
Councilmembers Michael Lamb and Nancy Mosier both were vocal about their feelings on the matter, stating that they believed the council should allow McClary to “do his job” by giving him the authority to pay bills without prior council approval.
“Mr. McClary I think, in light of our little disagreement on the policy, has come up with a nice way to do his job and give him an out to pay the bills in case some of this silliness occurs again,” Lamb said. “I think we should give him the out. He said that we have the authority to pull the bill registry each month to cancel out any bills we don’t want. What’s the difference between canceling the bills out, which we have never done since I’ve been here? We have never not paid a bill until last meeting…What are you doing except trying to exert a lot of control over something that requires little control?”
Lamb also added that he didn’t want to “micromanage” bills that he did not have time to read.
“If those of you that have time to read the bills, (you) can read them at length. Certain members here read all the bills and they find many things. They always bring them up. He’s still allowing you to do that,” said Lamb.
Other members of council maintained the same stance as Narsh, wanting to keep the approval process consistent with their previous best practices.
“I have seen cases where these invoices come before us, big dollar amounts, sometimes $500,000 to a payment to a contractor, and we raise questions. And that discussion goes back to that contractor. We can still pull that invoice off of the invoices payable, approve all of the rest, there’s no damage done to the community; that’s the way it works, it’s worked well,” said Councilmember Ken Van Portfliet.
Van Portfliet also asked McClary directly if not giving him this authority would hinder his ability to do his job to which Mclary said either procedure would be fine with administration.
Council President Pro-tem Teresa Rutt also said that she agreed with letting McClary pay the bills, but by following procedure by voting to pay the bills.
“I think it’s silly for anyone up here, any council member, to claim fiscal responsibility and not look at the bills because that is our responsibility too, as stewards of this village, is to review the bills,” Rutt said. “To sit here, any one of us, if we make the claim that we stand for fiscal responsibility and not look at the bills, that’s irresponsibility.”
The council voted 4-2 in favor of Narsh’s motion to keep the authority of bill payments with the council with Lamb and Mosier casting the two no votes.