Bristol Twp.’s Controversial Manager Set To Leave

Bristol Township is planning to part ways with Township Manager Bill McCauley, multiple sources told LevittownNow.com.

McCauley, who was not at Thursday’s Bristol Township Council meeting, is expected to be vacating the township manager post before the end of the year and possibly even sooner, the sources said Friday.

For months, sources inside the Municipal Complex on Bath Road have said McCauley has been on the outs with members of Council. He long has had a rollercoaster relationship inside the township and his relationship with some council members has reportedly declined since the start of the year.

McCauley took a medical leave in summer and returned in September. Sources said some employees weren’t sure if McCauley would return.

Earlier this year, McCauley was offered a role as a consultant with the township if he left the full-time head bureaucrat role, sources said.

McCauley is known for his skills in budgeting and planning, but he also has a reputation as being abrasive and hard to deal with. Council President Craig Bowen in a 2015 interview praised McCauley’s work on repairing the township’s financial situation but stated he could be “crude.”

McCauley previously was employed as director of administration for Bensalem, a consultant at Keystone Municipal Services, and as manager in Phoenixville and Lower Providence in Montgomery County and several towns in New England.

Several years before coming to Bristol Township, McCauley was found guilty of a 2007 hit-and-run crash that happened while he was intoxicated.

“I’ve had personal failings,” McCauley told the council when he was hired in 2012. “I have read that when you make a mistake the best thing to do is to acknowledge the mistake, learn the experience and move on with your life.”

In the past, McCauley was called “unethical” by a grand jury but not charged with any crimes. He has been involved in legal actions filed by former employees and had to apologize after he called the Delaware Valley Vietnam Veterans group “freeloaders” as the township was fighting with them over an unpaid repair bill.

“Bristol Township has been a political cesspool for at least 40 years. I accepted the job of trying to clean-up the mess of corruption, incompetence, and mismanagement in January 2012. The most amazing thing I have observed and experienced is the amount of resistance to my instilling integrity and ethics into the local government and complete lack of support from so many varied parties,” McCauley wrote in a response to the 2015 grand jury report.

McCauley has applied for several jobs outside of the township in the past few years, but stuck with Bristol Township and the Council stuck with him until recently.

In December 2017, Council approved a new contract with McCauley through December 31, 2022. The township manager’s salary in the 2019 budget was $202,000 with tens of thousands of dollars in benefits included.

Details on a potential settlement or payout for the rest of his contract were’t immediately clear.

Bowen said Saturday that he wasn’t at liberty to comment.

McCauley did not respond to a request for comment.