Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil responds to petition’s accusations

Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil said residents’ recent accusations of financial mismanagement are not true and lack context.

In a petition that was presented to the Town Council Sept. 8, a group of residents pointed to six instances in which town funds were poorly managed, such as the recent $1.2 million renovation of Town Hall and the town’s failure to allocate funds in recent years to pay for its unfunded $56 million pension liability.

The petition also claimed that funding for the manager’s office has increased by 45 percent in the past five years as funding for many other town services has decreased.

“I am proud of the town of Chapel Hill’s financial management and our consistent and transparent reporting of budget matters,” Stancil said in an email to the town government. Stancil did not respond to requests for comment made through the Town Manager’s Office.

Stancil provided a response to each of the six accusations of mismanagement in that email to the town.

While admitting he had allowed consulting costs for the town’s Central West Small Area Plan to become exorbitant, Stancil said he learned from the experience. In the future, the town will better train project managers before beginning the planning process.

“To meet the interests of the council appointed steering committee, the consultant continued with work over the original contract amount,” said Stancil, adding that it was the Town Council that had requested extra meetings for the Central West Small Area Plan to better incorporate public response into the plan.

Stancil cited the town’s longtime AAA rating from both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s as further proof of the town’s financial legitimacy. Stancil said the town has received recognition for its budget from the Government Finance Officers Association every year for the past 18 years. Stancil has been the town’s manager since 2006.

“I think that the first question is has there been any form of fraud from the manager’s office, and the answer is absolutely not,” Chapel Hill Town Council member Matt Czajkowski said.

“The second question is has there been reckless fiscal mismanagement, and the answer to that is also no,” he said.

David Schwartz, one of the signers of the petition, said that he and other signers will review Stancil’s response over the next several days.

“The fact that Mr. Stancil promptly provided these detailed explanations of the town’s finances in response to the petition is a good sign and inspires confidence,” Schwartz said.

Still, Schwartz said that he was not completely satisfied with Stancil’s response.

“Stancil seems to want to absolve himself of responsibility for the issues raised in the petition by passing the buck to the Town Council members,” Schwartz said.

“Stancil, of course, is hardly a passive bystander in the decision the council makes about town finances, because in many cases they follow the town manager’s recommendation.”

Czajkowski said he believes the petition represents a broader dissatisfaction with the way developments are presented to the town.

“I feel like the job of the staff is to present the pros and cons, so everyone involved can have a reasoned opinion,” he said.

“The way it has been presented to us is ‘Here is how it is going to work and here is how it is going to be presented,’ and that’s not how decisions with businesses are made.”

Czajkowski noted that he has not seen this strong of a mobilization from residents in the time he has been in office.

“When the town manager is accused of fiscal mismanagement, that’s a big deal,” he said.

“Anyone can throw a petition, but we certainly haven’t seen anything like that in the years I’ve been on the council.”

city@dailytarheel.com