By Eric Mark
The Citizens’ Voice
EXETER, Pa. — Officers of the Exeter Community Ambulance Association blame a recent failure to make payroll on an “unexpected cash-flow glitch.”
In a statement released this week, ambulance association President Richard McNeil said that ambulance employees did not receive their scheduled paychecks on Sept. 11 due to a cash-flow crunch caused in part by delays due to the Labor Day holiday.
McNeil, 53, a longtime officer in the ambulance association and a former Exeter fire chief, described the failure to make payroll as a “first-time inefficiency.”
The issue has been rectified and ambulance personnel who were due money have been paid, he said.
The ambulance association briefly ran out of money because it “received less than forecasted revenue from third-party billing payments” and some transactions took longer than expected to be processed because of the holiday weekend earlier this month, McNeil’s statement continues.
Ambulance association officials will review procedures to make sure the payroll problems do not happen again, McNeil said. The association employs about 12 emergency medical professionals, he said.
An independent auditor will conduct a full review and audit of the association’s books and records, McNeil said on Friday, when reached via phone. Once that audit is complete, he and two other association officers will resign, he said.
Those officers are vice president Thomas McNeil Jr., who is Richard McNeil’s nephew, and treasurer Richard Turner, also an Exeter borough councilman.
The audit will take place as soon as a qualified independent auditor can be identified and hired for the job, Richard McNeil said, adding that “it’s not going to happen overnight.”
He also said he had planned to resign as association president at the end of this year, to allow “the younger people to take over.”
This is the second time in four months that the McNeil family has been involved in controversy related to an emergency response organization in Exeter.
Richard McNeil was suspended from Exeter Hose Company 1, the borough’s fire department, in May. Thomas McNeil was suspended from the company at the same time, when he was the fire company’s president and Richard McNeil was the fire chief. Thomas McNeil has since been expelled from the fire company, as has his wife, Stephanie McNeil, the company’s former treasurer, according to current fire Chief Donald Skursky.
Stephanie McNeil was named in a search warrant last spring as a person of interest in the possible theft of Exeter Hose Company funds.
No arrests have been made in that case.
Richard McNeil on Friday declined to comment on issues related to the fire company.
“Those are separate issues,” he said.
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(c)2015 The Citizens’ Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)