Letter to the Editor

Dear Cit­i­zens,

I just wanted to point out some of the finan­cial prob­lems that the City expe­ri­enced under the Char­ter, with a City Man­ager run­ning the City. We under­stand that these exam­ples did not all hap­pen under the cur­rent City Man­ager, but these prob­lems occurred under Galion’s Charter/City Man­ager form of gov­ern­ment. All of these exam­ples are taken from the State of Ohio Auditor’s reports and indi­cate that the City Man­ager has too much power and that there is no checks and bal­ances over City finances.

(1) bounced checks – The City’s entire finan­cial oper­a­tion is under the City Man­ager, and only one sig­na­ture was required on City checks. At the time the City’s checks were bounc­ing, one of our City Coun­cil Mem­bers worked at the bank where the checks were bounc­ing. Did that City Coun­cil Mem­ber ever notify City Coun­cil or the City Man­ager of the irreg­u­lar­i­ties that were going on with the City’s bank account?

From Jan­u­ary 2003 through May 2004, the City incurred bank ser­vices charges of approx­i­mately $ 50,000 related to the City check­ing accounts. The City was charged over­draft fees as well as inter­est charges on the aver­age neg­a­tive cash bal­ances. This is a stag­ger­ing fig­ure and cov­ers a period of time from 2003–2004, reflect­ing that ‘red flags’ about City finances were out there for a long time and being ignored.

[FYI — Recently, I requested a copy of the City’s First Fed­eral Bank check­ing account state­ment from March 2004 (the month Bill Bauer shot him­self). Our City Finance Direc­tor told me that those records were destroyed and that the City did not have any copies; she then told me to con­tact First Fed­eral about get­ting a copy. I did just that; and was told by First Fed­eral that I would need to pay reg­u­lar bank charges for the research and copies, and I agreed to do that. Now, First Fed­eral has said that they will not release these City records until every sin­gle offi­cial and all Coun­cil Mem­bers have signed a release. Since the Finance Direc­tor alone has com­plete author­ity over the City bank accounts, this require­ment by First Fed­eral is just intended to give me the run around.]

(2) cell phones – The City Man­ager can spend a large amount of money with­out going to City Coun­cil. All City employ­ees were given cell phones. Why? In 2003, the City ended up with a bill of $ 111,443 for cell phones, of which employ­ees paid $ 22,978 leav­ing the City to pay $ 88,465. This was all done under the City Manager’s watch.

(3) credit cards – City credit cards were being issued to peo­ple who did not need them for any legit­i­mate rea­son, and they were being used to buy lunches even after the State Audi­tor told them to stop. The City Man­ager charged meals to the City credit card in the amount of $753.79 (2003) and $ 261.03 (2004) — these must sure have been some good lunches. Other credit card charges included tick­ets for muse­ums and pro­fes­sional hockey games. The employ­ees cer­tainly ben­e­fited from this, but the cit­i­zens who paid for this did not.

(4) employee ben­e­fits — vaca­tion – In 2003, the City Fire Chief was paid in cash for 220 hours of accu­mu­lated vaca­tion leave, total­ing $ 6105, but the total annual vaca­tion leave earned by the Fire Chief dur­ing 2003 totaled only 212 hours under the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment. Any vaca­tion leave pay­out to the Fire Chief should have been lim­ited to one-half of that (106 hours), which resulted in the Fire Chief being paid for 114 hours more vaca­tion than allowed, as the Fire Chief was inap­pro­pri­ately paid for the entire 220 hours of accu­mu­lated vaca­tion leave.

(5) employee ben­e­fits – uni­form allowance — Cur­rently the City is pay­ing yearly uni­form allowances to employ­ees who do not even wear uniforms.

These are just some exam­ples of ille­gal expen­di­tures and waste­ful expen­di­tures that occurred under the Charter/City Man­ager form of gov­ern­ment. These exam­ples show that the City Man­ager just has not been look­ing out for the public’s money.

Today, under our Char­ter, the City Man­ager still has too much power and the entire finan­cial oper­a­tion of the City is still entirely under the City Man­ager. I sup­port return­ing Galion to the statutory/mayor form of gov­ern­ment, with the lead­er­ship of the City being in the hands of four (4) elected offi­cials — the mayor, the audi­tor, the trea­surer, and the law direc­tor. Under the statu­tory form of gov­ern­ment, the City’s finances will then be the respon­si­bil­ity of two (2) elected offi­cials (the audi­tor and the part-time trea­surer) with them being respon­si­ble for all of the City’s funds and pro­vid­ing a much-needed checks and bal­ances over City finances.

Our cur­rent fis­cal emer­gency is one of the worst in the his­tory of the State of Ohio. We need to insure that noth­ing like this can ever hap­pen again. This Elec­tion, cit­i­zens can do some­thing about our City gov­ern­ment by vot­ing YES on the Char­ter Amend­ment (Issue 5) to return Galion to a statutory/MAYOR form of gov­ern­ment. We need a mayor who lives in Galion and cares about our City and our citizens.

Shirley A. Clark

Galion

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Nov 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.