Park Games
On a lighter side, here is how the city manages to mess up even the simplest of projects. Michael Serrano is a city employee who works on our city parks. The Parks & Rec Board voted last summer to pay half of his salary. Parks & Rec is funded by the sales tax collected in Marfa. They get 1/2 a percent of the sales tax; this comes to about $60,000 a year.
Dan Dunlap is treasurer. Dan Petrosky is secretary. Robert Lujan is chairman. Alex Leos Jr., Oscar Martinez, Leo Salgado and David Lanman are also on the board. Dan Dunlap and City Attorney Monte Akers drew up a contract to define the terms of the agreement to pay half the salary of this employee. The contract was given to the city to be executed.
The contract was to be signed by Sauceda, Lujan and Lanman. Lanman and Sauceda signed it. It is not clear if Lujan signed it at this time. Then Lanman took it to Evelyn Petrosky (Dan's daughter) to get it notarized after the fact. She refused. Lanman and Sauceda returned and signed a blank piece of paper in her presence to verify signatures. Then she notarized the form and returned it to the city. The city has no record of receiving the document. The city does not keep track of received documents.
In January, Sauceda then asked Dunlap for October's reimbursement. Dunlap asked for a copy of the signed contract. The city could not find it. It is lost. Dunlap refuses to pay until the contract is delivered.
This is another example of the incompetent administration of the city and the incompetent interference of the mayor in administrative tasks. It is unbelievable that the mayor thinks he can get a document notarized after the fact. Did he expect the daughter of a councilmember to do him a favor that could cause her to lose her license? Sadly, it is entirely believable that the city lost the only copy of a legal document. If you saw Sauceda's office organization, you would understand why this is believable.
Sauceda and Lanman continue to play games down at city hall. Parks & Rec is a well run board despite their involvement. Hats off to Dunlap for holding them accountable.
Dan Dunlap is treasurer. Dan Petrosky is secretary. Robert Lujan is chairman. Alex Leos Jr., Oscar Martinez, Leo Salgado and David Lanman are also on the board. Dan Dunlap and City Attorney Monte Akers drew up a contract to define the terms of the agreement to pay half the salary of this employee. The contract was given to the city to be executed.
The contract was to be signed by Sauceda, Lujan and Lanman. Lanman and Sauceda signed it. It is not clear if Lujan signed it at this time. Then Lanman took it to Evelyn Petrosky (Dan's daughter) to get it notarized after the fact. She refused. Lanman and Sauceda returned and signed a blank piece of paper in her presence to verify signatures. Then she notarized the form and returned it to the city. The city has no record of receiving the document. The city does not keep track of received documents.
In January, Sauceda then asked Dunlap for October's reimbursement. Dunlap asked for a copy of the signed contract. The city could not find it. It is lost. Dunlap refuses to pay until the contract is delivered.
This is another example of the incompetent administration of the city and the incompetent interference of the mayor in administrative tasks. It is unbelievable that the mayor thinks he can get a document notarized after the fact. Did he expect the daughter of a councilmember to do him a favor that could cause her to lose her license? Sadly, it is entirely believable that the city lost the only copy of a legal document. If you saw Sauceda's office organization, you would understand why this is believable.
Sauceda and Lanman continue to play games down at city hall. Parks & Rec is a well run board despite their involvement. Hats off to Dunlap for holding them accountable.
posted by RobC at 12:36 PM
19 Comments:
If this was the exception rather than the rule,it would still be stupid. BUT remember that between the two of them, Flo and Lanman "lost" the contract with ORCA accepting the Library grant from July until October. Flo could not find the City's copy of the voluminous County Emergency Management Plan and insisted that it be recopied for him. It was located sitting on a bookshelf in his office.
Stick to your guns, Dan!
Remember the City Administrator's contract that had one date in the body of the contract and another later date on the signature page? This is another example of Lanman's detaching the signature page from a document and carrying it around separately. I heard when he took the Parks signature page, he didn't take the contract it had been attached to. I guess they lost that too. If these bozos could ever generate anything inhouse without getting it from Akers, it might be a little easier to find stuff.
Anon 1:58, you haven't seen the disaster area that is Flo's office.
I gotta add this from a previous blog to attest to the tremendous restraint shown by Parks and Rec in dealing with Fric and Frack. Towit:
Using this as a general forum, I continue to marvel at the patience of the Parks and Rec Board. It committed 60K matching to the City (Flo the Grantwriter) to finish out the pool grant with improvements to the ball park and environs. A year has passed. What is holding this up? Flo. He is supposed to provide facts and figures to Tom Greenwood, the architect for this grant. Chances are the grant may be expired now. Greenwood and the Parks and Rec can't get off the nickel until Florencio gets off his duff and does some work for that 65K a year. What are the chances of that happening? No hurry, Flo. You are stranded here until your personal vehicle is repaired.
10:16 AM
I agree! Stick to your guns, Dan! You have a lot of people willing to back you up.
Please don't let them drag you into the area of questionable legalities with them. They don't seem to be concerned with complying with any Law unless it has a penalty attached or they think someone with the State might actually notice. Even then, they seem they wriggle out of whatever mess they have made by filing for extensions, exceptions, appeals or pleading ignorance.
If I may be so bold...the ubiquitous Petrosky. He is on the Chamber Board, the Airport Board, the Parks and Rec Board, the city council. Does he even live here anymore? Didn't his daughter just get hired as the Executive Director of the Marfa Chamber?
Petrosky begged pressing business concerns when he resigned from the city council. Times are a'changing. He has time for all the boards (also he is an illuminary in the VIP project),. plus city council, plus being a firearms dealer helping out the city with its firearms needs! What a citizen!
For some reason, a line from a song pops to mind: "Jokers on the left of me, clowns on the right of me, stuck in the middle again...." To frustrated anon, I feel your pain.
Yes Petrosky serves the community in many ways including firearms dealer to the city. He is on the chamber board of directors. His wife is president of the chamber. His daughter is "acting" executive director if I recall correctly, though her parents are lobbying for a full time job. His daughter also appears to be notary to the city. I think they live in Marfa but he moved his practive to Alpine. Small town. So many hats to be worn and so few heads to wear them...
Anyone know how the auditors are doing? Are they having fun yet with no filing system (the one mandated by State Law) and no inventory schedule(no way to account for City owned property)?
And no way to decipher last year's audit...
And no way to determine which version of last year's budget is the true legal version...
Oh yeah, must be fun down there.
Gotta clarify something. The pool grant is separate from the Parks and Rec project. That involves a USDA grant. But the USDA grant still needed information from Flo that was never forthcoming.
If I understand, the pool grant from the USDA (Parks & Rec funded by sales tax) "...still needed information from Flo that was never forthcoming." NEVER?
Do you mean that the paperwork on the pool USDA grant is still incomplete? I was under the impression that grants were monitored by the grantor during the process of using the grant money and that before a grant can be 'closed' an audit was required. If this is true(missing information), WHO conducted the audit and HOW was it closed?
Okay, I just received word that Dan Dunlap is driving the USDA grant now and will be working directly with Tom Greenwood. This grant has not officially been awarded and therefore no grantor has been monitoring it. The fact remains that Flo was supposed to provide operating costs for the MAC Building when the grant was initially proposed and has yet to do it. So much for Flo and his $15,000 for grant administration.
The swimming pool grant was an ORCA grant. The close out paperwork on it has been done but a site visit still has to be made by the project coordinator from Austin ORCA and the pool project must be in compliance for an official contract closeout ("audit"). Don't know when that will happen. Remember when the City's misoperation of the pool came to public attention? At a recent council meeting, Oscar asked Flo how the pool was doing and Flo of course said he did not know, he would check on it. Let's not forget that issue!
Alright, the work that has already been done on the pool was an ORCA grant, all of the paperwork required from Marfa has been submitted, next step is for someone to come to Marfa and look at the work, an inspection, of sorts. Then the paperwork will be reviewed (audited), and if in compliance with the terms of the contract/grant, it will then be closed out. So, it is not over, yet. The grantor/ORCA has not ‘approved’ the
'leftover' $9,000 bonus given to Greenwood.
The grant for (more) work on the MAC building has been submitted, incomplete, and Dan Dunlap has now been put in charge of it.
Do I understand yet?
Tom Greenwood is going to meet with USDA people in Ft. Stockton on Friday to get the ball rolling again. This was put on hold until pool was completed. It was completed in July 2006. We have been waiting since that time for Flo to get information together. 62K obligated matching funds by Parks Board but the money is not yet in a designated account until paperwork is completed. USDA is sending city letter telling them what they need to do, Resolution by city approving application, and so on. The important thing is that Dan Dunlap and Tom Greenwood are now carrying the ball, not Flo.
Figures being generated for Dunlap by Laura at city hall. The grant is still available, no thanks to Flo.
The Parks Board has realized that the grant was going nowhere unless it took over the responsibility, which Dan Dunlap has done. Tom Greenwood was trying to get the project off the nickel, as I understand it, but couldn't get the necessary information from Flo. More kudos to Dunlap.
Here is another grant related tid bit. On every grant I have EVER seen, one of the stipulations is that the grant money must be put in a SEPARATE ACCOUNT FOR THAT SPECIFIC GRANT as in at the bank!!! Flo has never done that. He maintains an account called "Grants" which to me indicates he can move funds around at will. This is one reason we have always had such a problem with EMS and Fire Department funds. He dabbles in everything.
Here is something relevant. Under Local Government Code 22.073(g): "(g) The secretary shall carefully keep all contracts made by the governing body."
Flo is the secretary. By losing a contract he has violated his responsibilities called for by state law.
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