Editorial: Independent presenting annual salary reports

We started with the Independent’s annual public employee salary report for the Belleville Area District Library in the Jan. 21 edition of our paper and then progressed to the Keystone Charter Academy report on salaries on Jan. 28.
This week we are presenting the city of Belleville report. Still coming are the reports from Van Buren Township, Van Buren Public Schools, and Sumpter Township.
We started with the library because Library Director Mary Jo Suchy is so efficient that she gets the report off to us immediately after receiving our Freedom of Information Act request. Keystone, of course, goes through the National Heritage Academies’ headquarters in Grand Rapids and their professionals get it to us very quickly, as well.
The city of Belleville uses Plante Moran as its financial director and Plante Moran has done our FOIA request for several years and gets it pretty fast, as well.
Van Buren and Sumpter townships, along with the school district, asked for 10-day extensions of their FOIAs. We finally have them all and will print them, one each week, until we are done with our report to our readers. All of the reports were by email, which is great. Sumpter is the only one that charged us for the FOIA. It billed us $92.42, the same as last year.
These are the salaries paid to our friends and neighbors who work for these bodies. Too much? Not enough? You decide.