Lower Saucon Hires Acting Township Manager

At their meeting Wednesday, Lower Saucon Township Council voted unanimously to hire a new acting township manager.

John “Jay” Finnigan Jr. will replace outgoing acting township manager and finance director Cathy Gorman, who resigned last month. Finnigan will be employed as acting township manager, acting secretary and acting township planning/zoning administrator for a four-month term effective April 18 at a rate of $145 per hour under the resolution approved Wednesday.

A subsection of Finnigan’s agreement specifies that as acting township manager he will be paid to attend township council meetings at a rate of $145 per hour between 6 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. and a rate of $225 per hour between 12 a.m. and 5:59 a.m.

Since early 2024, Lower Saucon Township Council has held a number of lengthy, sometimes acrimonious meetings that have extended past midnight. Wednesday’s meeting, which began at 6:30 p.m., lasted nearly eight hours, meaning that Finnigan would have received approximately $200 in additional compensation had his agreement been in effect at the time.

Finnigan was previously the manager of Hanover Township, Northampton County, from 2005 to 2024. He currently owns a consulting business, according to his Linkedin profile, which says he is a “seasoned municipal leader offering interim manager coverage, operational review and efficiencies, budget & financial analysis, recreation and emergency management review.”

Lower Saucon’s full-time manager Mark Hudson, who resigned from his position in early 2024 and was subsequently replaced by Gorman, is now the full-time manager for Hanover Township.

In other business, council voted 3-2 to approve a resolution to raise council members’ salaries effective at the time that new members are seated. The new council member salary will be $5,450 per year, which is currently the maximum compensation for a supervisor in a Pennsylvania municipality with a population of 10,000 to 14,999 by law, according to the resolution.

The current annual compensation for council members is $2,500 per year, according to the “Salary of council members” section of the township’s municipal code, which was last amended in December 1995.

Council also voted 3-2 at the meeting to authorize its solicitor and township staff to draft language for the expansion of the township’s volunteer fire company’s cost recovery program. The expanded recovery program would allow Lower Saucon Fire Rescue officials to bill property insurance providers for reimbursement of costs associated with fighting fires, to help the department recover needed revenue. Fire officials explained that they already bill for reimbursement of costs when responding to vehicle accidents and other roadway incidents at a town hall meeting held in Leithsville earlier this week.

A recording of Wednesday’s council meeting is available on the township’s YouTube channel.

The next Lower Saucon Township Council meeting is scheduled to be held Wednesday, May 7 at 6:30 p.m. at Lower Saucon Town Hall.