One criticism often lodged against township government is the seemingly high administrative costs for township assistance compared to actual assistance delivered. We believe these claims are at best misleading.

Townships provide any number of invaluable services to the community, including the operation of food pantries, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and payee programs, while also providing case management services and budget counseling to their constituents. Further, trustees are statutorily required to respond to all requests for assistance using comprehensive investigative techniques within 72 hours. This takes administrative time!

Unfortunately, all of these program costs get lumped into one category – administration. We believe that if townships reported their costs in the same manner as other community service agencies, you would find that our true administrative costs are closer to pennies on the dollar versus what you have been told.

Federal and state programs, along with other service providers, assign everything from case management services to pencils and paper to a particular program cost. By comparison, all program costs at the township level must be reported in the “administration” category, which drives our ratio of administrative dollars versus direct dollars up. This misrepresents what township administrative costs truly are.

Below is an actual township’s report. The report includes the year-end reporting figures currently used by our “opponents”, the ratio derived from the township’s TA-7 statistical report, and the same year-end reporting figures under the Salvation Army’s current reporting practices. We believe that using the current straight administration line item versus direct assistance distributed fails to give an accurate calculation of our administrative costs to operate township assistance.

Note: Both the Year-end report and the TA-7 statistical report are required to be filed by the township with the state. The statistical report was designed to more accurately reflect WHAT townships are doing with their “administrative” dollars.