LANCASTER TWP — As the township’s 2023 budget was discussed at a series of public meetings leading up to Monday night’s vote, two people expressed concern over projected legal fees.

The duo, Sandi and Heather Cox, say the legal fees listed in the township’s budget are too high compared to surrounding townships and previous years.

In its 2022 budget, Lancaster allocated $75,000 toward the line item “legal fees,” one of a number of professional services listed.

The amount allocated for legal fees drops to $65,000 in the preliminary 2023 budget. The legal fees account for about 4% of the budget, according to the 2023 proposed budget posted to the township’s website.

In past years, the fees were lower, the Coxes said. They cited that the legal fees were $15,000 in 2018.

Township manager C. Michael Foote said he could not immediately provide how much was spent on legal fees in past budgets. He said he did not know where Cox got the $15,000 figure from.

Foote said he could locate only broad general categories of content when uncovering records of prior budgets, categories that did not provide a detailed breakdown of specific expenditures.

A 2022 settlement with the Butler Eagle over a Right-to-Know request and lawsuit can account for at least part of the higher costs in recent years. The legal battle, which involved violation of Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, cost the township at least $6,500.

Gregory Kessler, who chairs the township’s board of supervisors, also said at a Nov. 21 budget meeting that one department in the township formed a union, which called for more legal fees in the 2022 budget year.

During that meeting, Foote had invited anyone with questions about the proposed 2023 budget to visit him at his office — an invitation that he said remains open.

“No one who picked up the budget to review themselves came back and said, ‘I’d really like you to walk me through this,’” he said. “No one has come in.”

The proposed budget projects no tax increase and a surplus, he said. This surplus amounts to $36,346.

Though at a glance Lancaster’s legal fees are lower than those listed in the budget of booming, developed Cranberry Township, the cost per resident amounts to $25.67 compared to Cranberry’s $4.44 per resident.

Lancaster, which has a population of 2,532 according to the 2020 Census, projects spending $65,000 toward legal fees in 2023, and Cranberry Township anticipates costs of $146,950 in legal services for its 2023 budget year. Those costs accompany a population of 33,096, per the 2020 Census.

Cranberry’s legal services encompass multiple line items: $115,000 in the general fund; $5,000 specific for land development; $500 for code enforcement legal services; $23,000 for police department support expenses; $3,000 for administration expenses and $450 for engineering expenses.

Cranberry Township manager Dan Santoro said on Friday that collective bargaining discussions with unions often drive higher costs for legal services. In Cranberry’s case, Santoro estimates it has about 150 full-time employees.

“We certainly talked to our legal counsel during the COVID period about work rules and collective bargaining agreements and our general employee population, right?” Santoro said. “How do you navigate that? To some extent we have a whole new set of policies that maybe we didn’t have before, because we weren’t working the same way, remotely.”

The budget proposed for 2023 in Jackson Township, positioned directly south of Lancaster, allocates $25,000 toward legal fees. Jackson had a population of 3,657 as of the 2020 Census, which equated to roughly $6.84 per resident.

“They have so much development going on, and their legal fees are only at $25,000, when you have Lancaster, who doesn’t have as much development, and theirs is at $65,000?” Heather Cox said last week.

Foote said Cox’s comparison did not account for key differences in the township’s management.

“It’s hard to do ‘apples to apples,’ because you just don’t know who’s doing what,” Foote said. “Some organizations, like Jackson, have a planner on staff.”

Jackson Township’s planner enables its council to manage duties without paying as much for legal consultation, which Lancaster must do more because one township leader is managing eight different responsibilities, Foote said.

“I’m the township zoning officer,” he said. “Other communities have a zoning officer ... There are times when consultation is really important, because you can easily get confused. So that’s why I think it’s really difficult to compare.”

Summit Township, with a population of 4,884 per the 2020 Census, lists $26,000 cumulatively for its solicitor, for its zoning hearing board solicitor and for its zoning court hearing solicitor in its proposed 2023 budget.

This amounts to $5.32 per resident in legal fees.

“If you’re getting into a more-complicated development, then you’re going to have more legal fees, because there’s going to have to be documents that are drawn up, with the developer,” said Roxanne L. Stickney, secretary, treasurer and zoning officer for Summit Township. “Legal fees are going to be developer-driven, because it depends on what they’re doing for their development.”

Stickney said legal documents needed for rapidly developing communities could involve land development, stormwater management, water or sewage. All of that means higher legal fees.

“I think Lancaster’s developing pretty well commercially,” she said. “As they grow, then their legal fees are probably going to grow as well.”

Neighboring Connoquenessing Township has accounted for $6,500 for legal fees in its proposed 2023 budget, or $12.31 per resident. Although the township also has lower legal fees, it also doesn’t have zoning, which requires much higher legal costs, according to Foote.