Jim Thorpe Borough Council on Thursday approved a $4,200 inventory audit for the Asa Packer Mansion to be conducted by the Industrial Appraisal Company.

The audit, which will assess and value the home’s contents, was deemed necessary, several council members said, because the borough recently took over operations of the historic home from the Jim Thorpe Lions Club.

“There is nothing being questioned,” Council President Greg Strubinger said. “It’s just to protect both parties since there has been a transition of the operations.”

The Lions Club officially stepped down as caretakers at the end of June.

In an April letter to the borough, the Lions Club cited “unnecessary obstacles” and a shift in focus toward “political bouts” as reasons for the withdrawal.

The three-story, 18-room, 11,000-square-foot mansion was built in 1861 and home to Packer, a prominent philanthropist, politician, and founder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and Lehigh University. His daughter, Mary Packer Cummings, willed the home to Jim Thorpe borough in 1912. In 1954, the borough struck an agreement with the organization now known as the Jim Thorpe Lions Club, who became caretakers of the property and opened it to the public for tours.

Council in June also formed a new management committee, which will consist of two of its members, the borough secretary and treasurer, and a current mansion guide.

The inventory audit commissioned by council on Thursday follows a similar audit done last year after longtime mansion curator Ava Bretzik and a majority of the home’s tour guides resigned in 2022 over the Lions Club remaining as caretakers.

Jay McElmoyle, former mansion director for the Lions Club, said Thursday that a new appraisal was not necessary.

“Considering we completed the same inventory appraisal less than a year ago, a more reasonable thing to do would be have someone take the appraisal information you received and verify all contents of the mansion are still accounted for,” he said.

Councilman Tom Chapman said while having to do another inventory audit so soon is “unfortunate,” “it is the cost of taking (the mansion) over.”

Jim Thorpe had also considered paying an outside firm between $10,000 and $12,500 for a financial audit at the mansion, but decided to have its own administrative staff do the work instead.

“It’s just a normal procedure...nobody wants to waste money, and nobody’s implying that there was any kind of misappropriation of anything,” Strubinger said at a workshop last week when discussing the audit.

McElmoyle said the financial audit was also unnecessary as the Lions Club submitted a financial report each month along with a year-end report.

“If there were any questions about mansion finances, council should have reviewed the reports received rather than spending a large amount of money to have someone else do this,” he said. “The Lions reports were very detailed; we always had open communication and transparency regarding the operations.”

Strubinger said the borough “had some discussion and the consensus on the financial audit was to have our administrative staff complete it in-house.”

The inventory audit, he said, will be done around every three years going forward.