Freed appointed tax collector
The township has a new tax collector.
Wm. Keith Freed was appointed by a unanimous vote of the Franconia Township Board of Supervisors, with board member Curtis Kratz taking part by phone, at a special meeting held Jan. 23.
“I appreciate your confidence in me and I again look forward to serving the residents of Franconia,” Freed said after thanking the board.
Freed was a member of the board of supervisors from 2003 until 2014 and previously served as chairman of the planning commission. He also has previously served as president of the Indian Valley Regional Planning Commission and president of Montgomery County Association of Township Officials.
He succeeds retiring tax collector Jerry DeLong, who held the position since 2003.
“You have some big shoes to fill,” board Chairman Grey Godshall said.
“I understand,” Freed said.
Rebecca Reeser was unopposed on the ballot in the November elections to be the new tax collector. The board was notified the beginning of the year, however, that she was unable to get bonding, Godshall said.
“It’s not a small bond. It’s a rather large bond,” board member Robert Nice said.
“It’s one-third of the money you collect,” Freed said. “The bond is for $9.6 million and the collection is $29 million.”
Five or six people applied to fill the opening, Nice said.
“We were looking for a full-time position, so that disqualified a couple of the folks,” he said.
There were also some other criteria, he said.
“We were looking for a certificate of completion for the tax collector exam. We clearly needed a bond certified and approved, and we also were talking about the training,” he said.
“It was very fortunate we had a qualified candidate who was very aggressively going after it,” board member David Fazio said.
Freed said he was preapproved for bonding, had a criminal background check completed and had taken a tax collector training course.
He said he talked to DeLong about the job, but did not go into the tax office or see the computer programs used before being appointed.
“Not wanting to be presumptuous, I wanted to do everything I possibly could to point me in the right direction, but I wanted to wait until after the appointment,” he said.
The tax bills will go out as usual on Feb. 1, he said.
DeLong told him he’s already arranged to have the tax bills printed, put in envelopes and mailed, Freed said.
Since the bills were prepared before the new tax collector was chosen, though, this year’s tax payments will go to “Franconia Township tax collector,” rather than also including his name, Freed said.
“There’s a lot of things in the transition that we’re gonna have to work our way through, but there’s nothing that can’t be worked through,” he said.
Freed said he will have to run again in the 2019 elections to retain the job.
Following the meeting, he said he worked for Shelly Enterprises for 46 years until this past October.
“I was looking for new opportunity and I had heard that there was a possibility of this coming up, so I put my name in,” he said.