By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Bronson’s newest councilwoman, Sherrie Schuler, raised a question at her first full council meeting on Nov. 1 as to why the council doesn’t get a chance to review the city’s bills before they are paid at Town Hall.

            The current procedure is for Town Manager Susan Beaudet and Mayor Robert Partin to approve checks for payment of the town’s bills before the council ever sees the bills at their meetings the same month.

            Schuler said she would rather get a chance to review the proposed expenditures before the checks are cut.

            “If we’re going to say we’re approving the payment, I would like to know what I’m approving,” Schuler said.

            Deputy Clerk Wendy Maragh said she doesn’t have a way to do that. She said she can’t put invoices into QuickBooks for council members’ monthly reports.

            “You can’t just put it on a page that says this is what needs to be paid?” Schuler said.

            “If I had the time I would,” Maragh responded. “Right now, I don’t have the time to do it. I mean, I’ll see if I can come up with something.”

            “If it ever comes up, what are we agreeing to pay, I have no way of knowing,” Schuler responded. 

            Spotlight Founder Linda Cooper said she has used Quickbooks in the past and it has a feature that would allow Maragh to separate invoices and send a report to council members.

            She agreed with Schuler that council members should be able to review the bills before the town manager and mayor cut checks to pay them.

            Mayor Robert Partin said the town is responsible for every check that is cut to pay a bill.

            “Every one of these checks comes across Susan’s desk and one of us has to sign it. It’s not like we’re just throwing it out here and writing a check,” Partin said.

            In an interview Saturday, Partin gave an example of why checks are cut ahead of council meetings. He said he signed payroll checks on Wednesday, the day after the council meeting.

            “If we had to wait for the council to approve that, the employees would have to wait two weeks before they would get paid. How many people are you going to get to work to do that?” he said.

            Partin said the bottom line is that the council members are elected officials entrusted by the city of Bronson to take care of paying the bills.

            “Everyone does this. I don’t know what the big fuss is. The fact of the matter is, we would be way behind paying our bills if we didn’t do it that way,” Partin said. “Understand, if she (Schuler) wants to come up here (to Town Hall) that’s perfectly fine. If anyone wants to come up here, it’s an open policy to check that stuff during the month. There’s two of us that has to sign it. You got two people taking care of it, that’s responsible for it. The county does the same thing, every municipality I know does it the same way.”

            “But you can’t take the money away from the vendor once its paid, right?” Partin was asked.

            “That’s right, but I’m staking my reputation on the line to do that as an elected official. That would be a death sentence to an elected official – writing checks that are not legitimate,” he said. “Sherrie’s new to this. It’s a learning process. I didn’t get upset with her. You are welcome to come up there every day to look. There’s nothing that I do for the City of Bronson that is not open. The city business is open business for the general public. You can see exactly how much I made last month, how much everyone made – public record.”

            “I take care of that money up there a whole lot better than my own. I give my own away to people. Up there I don’t,” Partin said.

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Town of Bronson Regular Meeting November 1, 2021; Posted November 7, 2021