SHAMOKIN - The city isn't in the running for a federal police grant, even though the grant writer has been paid.
That's because an online grant application made to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), an office of the U.S. Department of Justice, was only partially submitted.
Meg Bartos, wife of City Clerk Steve Bartos, was contracted by the city to prepare and submit the grant application. She said glitches with the "complicated" federal application website stymied the process on deadline.
Despite the application not being submitted in full, she was paid in full - $2,500, and 11 days before deadline.
Being paid up front, she said, is "typical" for grant writers.
Meg Bartos is the Democratic nominee for Northumberland County prothonotary. She and her husband hold that allegations and insinuations about her performance on the grant work are purely politically motivated.
Steve Bartos and Northumberland County Commissioner Vinny Clausi clashed Monday over this topic, and others, and Meg Bartos addressed Clausi Tuesday during the county commissioner's meeting about perceived "bullying." (See story, page 1.)
"It's not like I'm walking away, saying 'thanks for the check, see you later' and skipping town," she said. "I went to them right away."
She said she has offered to pursue other grant opportunities for the city police department at no additional cost to the city.
"This is all politically motivated, and I know it is," Meg Bartos said.
The City of Shamokin was seeking grant funding that, if approved, would have provided funding to cover three years of salary and benefits for a new patrolman - up to an estimated $450,000.
The application failed, both she and her husband said, due to technical difficulties with the COPS website leading up to the 7:59 p.m. June 4 deadline.
A COPS spokesman confirmed the application was only partially submitted. It could not be confirmed if the computer issues arose on deadline. However, the June 4 deadline set by COPS was originally extended from May 22 for all grant applicants after issues arose with its website over an estimated period of four days, the spokesman said.
About 1,700 applications were received, the spokesman said.
Invoice paid
Meg Bartos submitted an invoice billing the city 40 hours and seeking payment of $2,500, which she says is her typical retainer fee.
That equals a rate of $62.50 an hour, but council's approval as originally reported by The News-Item was for $50 an hour, not to exceed $2,500.
None of the city's four councilmen could remember the motion verbatim, but they all said recently when contacted for comment that the $50-an-hour rate is how they understood the agreement.
The official minutes from the May 13 meeting at which Meg Bartos' firm, Green Reliance Associates, was contracted say differently: simply that Green Reliance be paid $2,500.
A request from The News-Item was denied last week by the city's Right-To-Know officer, Steve Bartos, to listen to an audio recording of that meeting to confirm the language of the motion.
The state's Right-To-Know law lists audio recordings as a public document, but Steve Bartos has said the city's audio recording is not part of the official record. He has since asked for an additional 30 days to review the request.
Meg Bartos' invoice was paid the same day it was submitted, May 24, ahead of the extended deadline of June 4. She says she continued to work on the application after payment was received, and that she exceeded 40 hours in doing so.
Short deadline
The city got a late start on the application process, but sought to pursue the grant regardless since there remain three police officer vacancies within the department.
Meg Bartos said she came in "at the 11th hour" after the city was unable to find another grant writer to do the work on such short notice.
A May 9 e-mail from Steve Bartos to the mayor and city councilmen says he had been made aware of the grant by Police Chief Ed Griffiths which could bring Shamokin $375,000, offsetting 75 percent of salary and benefits for a new patrolman.
Green Reliance was approved on a 5-0 unanimous vote to pursue the grant, during which Steve Bartos put the grant prize at $450,000.
It was never stated in public during the meeting that Green Reliance is owned by Meg Bartos. The News-Item made the connection afterward when more information on the firm was sought online.
E-mails between COPS and Griffiths show the police chief initiated the process online for the 2013 application, with the funding request "verified" on the morning of May 15.
Griffiths said he'd spoken on the phone with Meg Bartos a few times regarding the grant, including in the hours leading up to the June 4 deadline. She picked up a binder from the 2009 application a few days before. That was about the extent of his interaction with her, he said.
The city received a COPS grant in 2009. It was used to avoid the furlough of Jarrod Scandle, who is now a corporal with the department. Former Police Chief John Brown worked on the application. He was assisted at no cost by former Fire Chief Jim Catino.
Computer claims
In a June 5 e-mail to a COPS representative, Steve Bartos said the website froze when his wife attempted to input the city's budget data. She was on the phone with the office's call center staff to help resolve the issue, but a solution couldn't be found, he wrote.
A request from the city clerk to allow the submission of a hard copy of the application was denied by COPS on June 7. It required an online submission, the COPS office said, and applicants should have been aware that the process would take several weeks to complete.
According to an e-mail dated July 3 sent to the mayor and councilmembers, Steve Bartos told the elected officials that "extreme difficulties" with the COPS website and that "not everything that was submitted was received on the other end." Meg Bartos said she met with the mayor and the police chief immediately after the computer difficulties occurred.
"Although not all submittals are awarded or meet deadlines, Meg still feels responsible for this item. With that said she has developed a grants matrix (attached) with the universe of grant funding that is available to police. She wants to apply for several of these grants on behalf of the Shamokin police and will not take any compensation for this work," Steve Bartos wrote.
His wife said much the same. The grant application function of the website, she said, was revamped entirely prior to the application process opening on April 22. It malfunctioned for several days leading up to the original May 21 deadline, as confirmed by the COPS spokesman.
She said in her experiences writing grants, this system was among the most unfriendly to use. It was difficult throughout the entire grant application process, she said, and was not allowing the information to be inserted correctly.
Council comment
Councilman R. Craig Rhoades made the motion to contract with Green Reliance. It was seconded by Councilmember Michael Snyder. They and fellow councilmembers William Milbrand and William Strausser along with Mayor George Rozinskie voted in favor.
The mayor suffered an injury in a slip-and-fall last month and was not contacted for this story.
However, all four city councilmembers have since acknowledged that they were aware of the connection between Meg Bartos and Green Reliance, and have said they were told no other grant writers were available on such short notice.
None of the councilmembers saw the invoice nor were they aware of a discrepancy in the hours billed and the amount paid, they said.
Snyder said he didn't believe there was a conflict of interest. If he felt there was, he said he would have opposed the motion to contract with Meg Bartos.
Milbrand said he was "irritated" by the situation.
"I'm concerned that we're spending money when we didn't get results," he said, adding that the issue is that the grant application was not submitted in full.
Rhoades was asked if he was comfortable that Meg Bartos was paid in full before deadline.
"Comfortable? I can't say that I am. It's something that the council needs to discuss. I think sometimes payment in haste is the wrong thing to do. With the financial issues that we need to worry about, sure it is (a lot of money)," he said.