Bell AGAIN verbally assaults a member of the public

Woman is verbally assaulted by the bellicose Supervisor, continuing a pattern of ugly behavior by an unelected and illegally appointed official

On a night when the story of the meeting should have been revealing of the 2023 audit (which was five months late), the obnoxious behavior of a member of the Board of Supervisors (BOS) toward a member of the public was the story instead.

During the non-agenda public comment period, a woman (whose name I will not use to avoid more embarrassment for her) asked to speak, though she’d not signed up. The subject of her commentary was the recently distributed township newsletter. She gave a critique, stating that there were an awful lot of ads, but not a lot of information. After explaining that she’d compared it to other township’s newsletters, adding that Exeter’s looked like “the Clipper magazine” (an advertising mailer for businesses). Citing examples from the newsletter, her opinion was that it was lacking and should be revised for the future.

At about the four minute mark of her remarks, illegally appointed Supervisor George Bell chimed in, “Ma'am, can you wrap this up? You're, you're killing me.”

The rest of the exchange:
Commenter: No,just a minute.

Bell: No, really. Can you wrap it up?
Commenter: Finance, two big things, the library needs money.
Bell: Can you please wrap it up?
Commenter: The library needs money. The bake sale and the holiday sale are little, tiny things, okay, for the fire company and for the township, you have Halloween, and the description on the other side you have a little tiny ad.

Bell: We don't really need the newsletter read to us, can you kindly wrap it up?

Commenter: …the township gives, it's a big community. Then every… Christmas, every holiday. If you want people to come to it, why does it look like this?
Bell: We had 2500 people come to it last year. Ma'am, give the microphone back to Jennifer.

Commenter: Take a look at this. There's no accompanying description, like there is from Halloween.

Bell: GIVE the microphone BACK to Jennifer, please.

Chair Jack Piho then burst in with, “Yeah. Let's wrap it up. We're going to we're going to adjourn. Okay, we get it. Okay, we get it. Do I have a motion to adjourn?”

Is this any way for elected, selected, and illegally selected officials to treat a member of the public? This after the woman asked to speak when Piho put it out for anyone who wanted to be heard. He asked her to step to the podium, and she said that when she gets nervous, she shakes. So Jennifer Kauffman, who runs the video for the meetings, brought the mic to her at her seat. She admitted to being nervous, I don’t recall her ever being at the mic before, or even at a meeting. So is it the stated goal of the BOS to discourage public participation? I’ve reached out to two members of the BOS for comment, but have not heard back from them. I’ll post any responses I get in comments.

Two pages of the Fall Exeter Newsletter

A public apology from Bell and Piho must be issued immediately. This disrespect of the taxpayer cannot go unchallenged.

Elsewhere in the meeting, the aforementioned 2023 audit was presented by Stewart Morcom, of Withum, the township’s new auditing firm. Morcom said that there were “no deficiencies” in the audit and gave an upbeat report of the township’s financial reporting. The township refused to include the draft of the audit with the agenda packet, so once that is released, we will do a full analysis of the document, with our experts.

Police Chief Matt Harley presented his August crime report for Exeter Township.

He also spoke about the DUI checkpoint that was held at Perkiomen Ave and 47th Street, Friday night the 20th from 10PM-2AM. The following violations occurred and conditions were observed.

Number of vehicles that went through the checkpoint:  768

  (we waived 200 through for congestion)

Number of vehicles we contacted 568

Number of DUIs:  7

                --1 DUI-A, 4 DUI-D, 2 DUI-C

                (with 7 DUIs in 568 vehicles we sadly remain above the national average of DUIs found at DUI checkpoints)

Other arrests

                --1 felony weapon (ghost gun recovered)

                                (No license)

                --11 Drug Charges

                --1 Wanted person

                --1 Out of state DUI Suspended Repeat Offender

63 Traffic Citations

                --5 Child Safety Seat Violations

                --4 Suspended Drivers

                --5 unregistered vehicles

                --5 Fraudulent Inspection stickers

                --22 expired inspections

                --2 cars with no insurance

Assisting Agencies

·        Exeter Fire Police

·        Exeter Fire Department

·        Exeter Township Road Crew

·        Cumru Pd

·        Muhlenberg PD

·        CBRPD

·        Laureldale PD

·        Hamburg PD

·        Wyomissing PD

·        Shillington PD

·        South Heidelberg

DUI-A is alcohol positive only.
DUI-D is drug positive only.

DUI-C is combination of the two.

The Exeter PD also gave out commendations to Officers Jacob Auman and David Qawasmy. In the case of Auman, he was given the Unwavering Dedication and Exceptional Service in the Line of Duty Award for his work in three narcotics investigations, the search warrants of which led to drug and weapon charges, as well as a seizure of a large quantity of drugs.

Qawasmy was given the Exceptional Duty Award for his work on a narcotics investigation that led to a large seizure of drugs, and a quarter million dollars in cash, and a traffic stop that led to drug seizure and large check fraud scheme.

Chief Harley said after the ceremony, “I'd like to take a moment to recognize Officers Auman and Qawamsy for truly embodying the Exeter police department standards of professional courage. When this goes into our stats, it shows two drug arrests, but think about the amount of drugs and money we've taken off the street. It shows we're dedicated for the families in this community and this department's ongoing commitment of making Exeter a great place to live. So I'd just like to thank these gentlemen for their hard work and dedication to our police department.”

The next Supervisors meeting will be on October 14th at 7 PM, which will be preceeded by a Budget Workshop meeting at 6.