Candidate questions opponent’s bills to township

The $28,000 bill has since been withdrawn

NEW HANOVER » May, June and July may not be traditionally busy times for election season, but the seemingly settled race for township supervisor here is proving to be the exception.

In recent months, Republican candidate Shawn Malloy has been questioning Republican candidate William “Ross” Snook, particularly over the bills Snook submitted to the township as a consultant — more than $93,000 overall.

Malloy, a police officer in Conshohocken, said he researched Snook’s bills because “something didn’t seem right,” about them.

He brought his concerns to Supervisor Andrew Kelly, who is not running for reelection and who, at the May 22 supervisors meeting, raised questions about an April 10 bill from Snook for $28,485.

The bill was for 316 hours of work in previous years for which Snook had not previously submitted any bill.

Snook has since withdrawn the April bill because, he said,

“I didn’t want them to use it against me in the election.”

Hired in 2015

According to the minutes of the township supervisor meeting of Aug. 10, 2015, Snook was hired “as a consultant to assist with Gibraltar Rock at an hourly rate of $90. Work assignments and requests for payment will be reviewed and monitored by the solicitor and township manager.”

Gibraltar Rock, as most know, is the name of the company that for more than a decade has been trying to establish a rock quarry in an ever-growing footprint in town.

The absence of a contract on file at the township building was a concern raised at the May 22 meeting, this time by Supervisor Charles D. Garner Jr., according to the township minutes of the meeting.

Snook confirmed there was never any contract drawn up between him and the township, but that he and former supervisors chairman Doug Muller and former township manager Kevin Tobias created a “job description” for his work.

Legal Threats

Two months after being hired by the township, Snook received a certified letter from a law firm representing the quarry threatening to “take all appropriate action to recover damages caused by your slanderous conduct.”

Signed by Daniel Utain, for the firm Kaplin Stewart, the Oct. 29, 2015, letter was referring to comments Snook made at public meetings and to reporters in which he expressed his opinion about what would happen if Gibraltar were allowed to begin quarry operations prior to the clean-up of the former Good’s Oil site, now deemed to be the source of groundwater contamination that poisoned area wells and required a $1 million public water system to be installed.

Utain wrote Snook made those statements “solely to incite fear and panic among the New Hanover Township residents in a desperate attempt to generate opposition to interfere with Gibraltar’s land development plans.”

“I spoke up to protect my neighbors and protect my home,” Snook told The Mercury Friday.

Since that time, engineers testifying on behalf of the township in zoning hearings on Gibraltar Rock’s plans to expand its quarry operation to land adjacent to the pollution site, have agreed with Snook’s earlier assessment that the pollution at the adjacent site could spread if the quarry begins operations there.

How Much Did it Cost?

According to the 10 bills that Malloy provided to The Mercury, five of the bills all ranged between $7,762 and $7,920. The others ranged from a low of $2,317.50 to a high of $6,332.50.

Snook told The Mercury he set “a ceiling” on the number of hours he billed the township so as not to create political problems for the township.

All total, Snook billed the township for more than $65,000 from November of 2015 through August of 2016 when, according to a log he typed up, he was “told not to do any more work by Greg Prowant,” who was the interim township manager at the time.

Although Snook was hired in 2015 by a vote of the supervisors, he was apparently let go without one. There is no mention in the June or July supervisors meeting minutes for 2016 making any mention of a vote to stop Snook’s work.

Snook said his bills “are a pittance compared to what the township has spent on legal bills and court costs in the Gibraltar matter.”

Along with the bills, Snook provided detailed, hand-written logs of the work he had done, some of which Malloy questioned, such as reading geo-physics articles and books.

“I’d like to get paid to read a book,” said Malloy.

But Snook told The Mercury what he was doing is no different than what a lawyer or engineer does, reviewing articles, regulations and documents in order to provide accurate information to the supervisors.

“My work had real value and they (the supervisors) got results,” Snook said.

Asked about those results, Snook said he found inconsistencies in details of quarry plans, information about a possible Native American site on the quarry property that could be of archeological interest and that “the temperament of the board began to change. They are willing to do the right thing. They have a whole different attitude and the planning commission is now betterinformed.”

The $28,000 Bill in Question

In the log attached to his Nov. 19, 2015, bill, Snook wrote that he met with Muller at “no charge” and that he would do some work “at no expense to the township.”

It is this work that ultimately accounts for the $28,485 April bill that was questioned at the May 22 meeting.

Snook provided a log for those hours he had worked “at no charge” and told The Mercury Friday he ultimately decided to charge the township after all in April because “the attitude of the board didn’t seem like they wanted to move forward.”

Asked how his work could have changed the attitude of the supervisors toward his point of view and at the same time be unfriendly enough that he decided to charge for $28,000 worth of “free” work, Snook replied “I have no comment.”

Licensing Questions

Malloy has also gone to great lengths to demonstrate that Snook is not a licensed geologist, providing a list of all licensed geologists in the state.

Snook’s name is not among them.

Snook said he “made it clear” during the 2015 closed-door executive session in which he was interviewed that he is neither a licensed geologist or engineer “and I asked that all my work be reviewed by the engineer.”

He said he provided the supervisors with a multipage resume and letters of recommendation — which he also supplied to The Mercury — covering everything from his 1970 graduation from Norwin High School, through his Penn State bachelor’s degree in earth science, to his work history overseeing drilling of oil wells and supervisory for a Hatfield environmental restoration firm.

In 2002, Snook started his own business, Seven Oaks, LLC, selling safety and industrial supplies. It is through Seven Oaks that he billed the township.

Malloy said he decided to look into the Snook’s qualifications after being interviewed for a vacancy on the Environmental Advisory Board, which Snook chairs, and noticing “that he didn’t seem to understand some of the scientific terms I was using.”

Muddled Election Picture

To the uninformed voter, a look at a New Hanover ballot in November could lead to the mistaken impression that Snook and Malloy are running mates. They are not. As a result of the primary election in May — prior towhich Malloy filed a court complaint getting incumbent Marie Livelsberger thrown off the ballot for missing a filing deadline he missed by a larger margin — Snook and Malloy appear as the only two Republican candidates for the two open seats with full six-year terms.

However, Snook is running with Livelsberger, who secured a Democratic line on the November ballot through a write-in campaign in May, and with incumbent Kurt Zebrwoski.

In the primary, Zebrowski defeated challenger Brian Hemingway, Malloy’s running mate, for a third seat on the board.

That seat only has two years remaining on its term. Zebrowski was appointed to that seat last August, after longtime supervisor Ralph Fluharty resigned a month earlier.