A settlement has been reached in litigation filed by Southmoreland School District against former building and grounds supervisor Earl Cramer Jr., Eugene Ciafre, General Products and Supply Inc. and other companies owned by Ciafre, and Tony Lizza, who has since won a seat on the school board.

The suit was filed about a year ago after the district alleged Cramer bypassed the state-mandated process to buy supplies for the district and purchased supplies for the district that it didn't need and that were over-priced, from General Products and Supply Inc. and other companies owned by Ciafre, where Lizza was the sales associate. Lizza solicited the purchases from Cramer on behalf of Ciafre's companies.

District Solicitor Dave Petonic said the original lawsuit sought an approximate $35,000 reimbursement for the unnecessary purchases and added that the suit also allowed for recouping attorney and other legal fees.

The district's counsel asked board members Thursday night to approve a total settlement in the amount of $45,000 to the district from the defendants.

"There are two reasons why it's important to take a settlement rather than seeing this through to the end," Petonic said. "First is the potential for any number of parties to file for bankruptcy, which would create an extended amount of delay." The other reason is that the $45,000 is more than the hard losses the district realized by paying inflated prices for supplies needed or paying for supplies not needed, he noted.

Petonic said that from all of the invoices from the different Ciafre companies, the district saw a cost of about $37,000. But if you took into consideration the lower costs from companies approved through the bid process, those same supplies would cost about $17,000, making the actual hard losses about $20,000, he added.

As for other costs associated with the suit, Petonic said the rest of the settlement would pay for $1,700 in stenographer fees, sheriff fees for serving the complaints, a $5,000 deductible to represent Porter in a lawsuit against him, and a large amount of the attorney fees incurred by the district.

As part of the settlement, Ciafre and Cramer agreed to drop their lawsuits against the district.

Ciafre claimed the district owed over $5,000 in payments for supplies that had been delivered but not paid.

Cramer claimed he should be paid an early retirement incentive of $25,000 that the district offered to qualified individuals, as well as about $10,000 worth of health insurance per year for 10 years under an Administrative / Members of Management Team Plan for Southmoreland School District. The withdrawal of this lawsuit alone possibly saved the district $125,000 if the lawsuit was ever awarded in Cramer's favor.

Throughout the process, third party complaints were filed against district Business Manager Bill Porter enjoining him to the defendants in the lawsuit filed by the district for the possible mishandling of records. However, his attorney, Anthony Sanchez with Andrews and Price law firm, announced Thursday that both third party complaints were withdrawn.

"Bill (Porter) did not enter into any settlement agreement with those people and no money was exchanged on his part," Sanchez said.

"I did my job in the best interest of the district, and if I had to do it over again, I would make the same choices in the best interest of the school district," Porter said.

With Lizza abstaining and Director Joe Eckman absent, the motion to approve the settlement passed with all other directors voting yes.

"Through us pursuing this, the district actually came out (with over $125,000) from money they saved, didn't spend or recovered from wrong actions," Director Paul Bayura said.

Director James Rausch agreed. "No matter what this cost, we had to take a stand to do what had to be done to say that you don't rip off the district," he said.

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