Disclaimer: The ideas expressed below are the personal thoughts and opinions of Nate Covington and do not necessarily reflect the position of Barrett Township or the Board of Auditors.

Background: There are 15 second-class townships in Monroe County. All of them function with 3 elected supervisors except three: Barrett, Tobyhanna, and Coolbaugh.

Due to the fact that all three banks in Mountainhome have been robbed since 2015, after the Barrett Police department disbanded, I wanted to share an idea that I heard:

The three banks should share the cost of an armed security guard. They would patrol the section of Route 390 where First Keystone, NBT, and ESSA are situated along a 0.8 mile stretch of road.

A few months ago, I filed a right-to-know request asking for an asset inventory of the township maintenance department of any item valued at $500 or above. 

I reached out to York Rake, the manufacturer, asking for information about our town’s 1987 HTR Street Broom.  

One would be forgiven for thinking our town's equipment being too old to get parts for anymore, or that we loaned it to another township.  I learned not only does Barrett Township actually own a street sweeper, but it’s even a current model.  Below is a transcript of my email thread with York Rake.

I attended the supervisor meeting on June 22, 2010 to express my displeasure as a member of the community about the Blue Ridge Communications franchise fee. My concern was with an exclusive franchise agreement in place, our service would suffer, as there is (and was) no other choice of TV / Internet service provider.  What will motivate Blue Ridge to improve their services with no competition?

However, the meeting minutes indicate the exact opposite:

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed below are the personal thoughts and opinions of Nate Covington and do not necessarily reflect the position of Barrett Township or the Board of Auditors.

Please note that this article has been updated to include details about the $148,270 grant that was used to renovate the Barrett Firehouse.

Earlier this year, I filed a right to know request with Barrett Township requesting "documentation of all moneys received related to the Mount Airy Casino since 2014."

The response from the township was as follows:

isclaimer: The ideas expressed below are the personal thoughts and opinions of Nate Covington and do not necessarily reflect the position of Barrett Township or the Board of Auditors.

I am making available the files from 1998 onwards that I have in my possession, including meeting minutes, budgets, auditor meetings, reorganization meetings, and more.  

Disclaimer:  The ideas expressed below are the personal thoughts and opinions of Nate Covington and do not necessarily reflect the position of Barrett Township or the Board of Auditors.

Earlier this year I filed a Right-to-Know request as a private citizen to view the township’s pension plan.

Why should residents care?

Well, for starters, township residents were taxed $55,000 in 2017 to fund the plan which has around $1 million in assets.  In the same year, the State of Pennsylvania contributed an additional $32,000 to the pension fund.  

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed below are the personal thoughts and opinions of Nate Covington and do not necessarily reflect the position of Barrett Township or its Board of Auditors. 

After I was appointed auditor in November 2018, I requested a copy of the previous year’s CPA audit from Pam Gardsy (Barrett Township Secretary/Treasurer, who replaced Rick Scrudato in 2015).  Pam emailed a copy of the auditor’s report, but it did not include the cover letter.  I wound up filing two Right-To-Know requests to obtain the following information:  

Editor's Note:
A member of the community forwarded this article to me and I want to share the idea with everyone. Last year, the recycling center in Barrett closed, and this might be a great way to respond. It's environmentally friendly and we'd be creating value out of items that we used to discard...

These DIY Machines Let Anyone Recycle Plastic Into New Products

The majority of the 300 million tons of plastic produced every year isn’t recycled, and recycling that does happen typically happens at an industrial scale in factories using equipment that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. But a growing number of designers are using a set of open-source, easy-to-build tools to recycle plastic and manufacture new plastic products on their own.

Editor's Note: This survey was conducted in April and May of 2017.  Sorry for the delay in posting the results!  I had gone to a few supervisor meetings and brought these results directly to the supervisors but nothing was done about it since.  I also noticed that they already have a PA system in the municipal building.