Marfa City Grants
Do you have trouble keeping track of all the grants that the city has received or is working on? Are you confused by ORCA, COG, TCEQ, TWDB, CDBG, TCDP, PSC, MAC and USDA? Do you wish you had a handy table to look up information on past, present and future grant and loan activity for Marfa?
Wish no more; your wish has been granted! From the hard work of a dedicated citizen and frequent blog reader, I present you the most comprehensive table on Marfa grants that has ever been produced! OK, I don't have the history to back up that last statement. Still, it's an impressive bit of research.
A large table like this does not publish well in the narrow blog column format, so I have posted it to a web page of its own. You can view the grant matrix at the following link:
City of Marfa Grant Matrix
It's interesting to note that only one grant was written by our current city administrator. How's that grant going? In a word, poorly.
Sauceda bought a police car for the chief by telling the council that it was a code enforcement vehicle and would be paid for with the grant money. That purchase was covered in the fourth post in this blog, called "Drive it home today!" back in August. The administrator put the car in service before council approved the purchase and before the city paid for it. How did the city pay for it? The $17,500 sedan was charged to the capital improvements line item in the police budget. That line item was budgeted at $3,850 for the guns that the department purchased. At the end of the year, $20,960 had been charged against that line item. That includes the car and the guns.
I do not know the line item that was used for the few thousand dollars for the radio, camera, concealed lights and such used to turn a sedan into an unmarked police car. Perhaps it was charged to police vehicle maintenance that was budgeted at $2,797 and had total charges of $6,197. The city never made a draw down on the grant money. It is still sitting in a bank somewhere.
Interesting situation, many options:
The proper way to buy a new vehicle for the city is to budget it at the beginning of the year and allocate funds. If it was impossible to see that need at the beginning of the year, the next option is to present the needs to council for them to discuss, consider and take appropriate action.
If council decides it is an urgent need, council is required by law to amend the budget before spending the money. In that amendment, they are required to find more revenue to pay for the vehicle or cut budgets elsewhere to fund that amount. The Comptroller for the State of Texas frowns on the municipal practice of ignoring the budget and then amending it at the end of the year to force the budget to reflect actual expenses.
Unbudgeted capital expenses are not legal no matter the amount of money. Budgeted capital expenses over $3000 must be approved by the governing body (city council).
Sauceda's contract was recently re-granted to extend for nineteen months. I guess council likes the job he is doing. Martinez, Rivera and Petrosky voted in favor of that contract.
Let me know what you think of the table. Does it contain too much information? Not enough? Is it clearly presented? How can we make it better? At this point, I don't know if this is a one-shot report or something that will be updated. It depends on your comments and volunteer time. If you have information to be added or changed, just post a comment and someone will take care of it. Keep in mind that this was not done by the city. It was not done with full access to all the documents. Let's keep the comments focused on making this a better document. If the city wants to create a comparable document, I would be happy to post it also.
"An open government is the cornerstone of a free society."
--Texas Attorney General's web site on Open Government
Wish no more; your wish has been granted! From the hard work of a dedicated citizen and frequent blog reader, I present you the most comprehensive table on Marfa grants that has ever been produced! OK, I don't have the history to back up that last statement. Still, it's an impressive bit of research.
A large table like this does not publish well in the narrow blog column format, so I have posted it to a web page of its own. You can view the grant matrix at the following link:
City of Marfa Grant Matrix
It's interesting to note that only one grant was written by our current city administrator. How's that grant going? In a word, poorly.
Sauceda bought a police car for the chief by telling the council that it was a code enforcement vehicle and would be paid for with the grant money. That purchase was covered in the fourth post in this blog, called "Drive it home today!" back in August. The administrator put the car in service before council approved the purchase and before the city paid for it. How did the city pay for it? The $17,500 sedan was charged to the capital improvements line item in the police budget. That line item was budgeted at $3,850 for the guns that the department purchased. At the end of the year, $20,960 had been charged against that line item. That includes the car and the guns.
I do not know the line item that was used for the few thousand dollars for the radio, camera, concealed lights and such used to turn a sedan into an unmarked police car. Perhaps it was charged to police vehicle maintenance that was budgeted at $2,797 and had total charges of $6,197. The city never made a draw down on the grant money. It is still sitting in a bank somewhere.
Interesting situation, many options:
- Is the administrator going to draw down that grant and buy another car after he told council that he already purchased the code enforcement vehicle?
- Is he going to let that grant money slip away?
- Is he going to take away the chief's car to give to a part-time employee of the chief so that he can draw the money down in compliance with the grant?
- Is he going to draw down the money, let the chief use the car, find an old beater for the code enforcement person, and violate the spirit of the grant?
The proper way to buy a new vehicle for the city is to budget it at the beginning of the year and allocate funds. If it was impossible to see that need at the beginning of the year, the next option is to present the needs to council for them to discuss, consider and take appropriate action.
If council decides it is an urgent need, council is required by law to amend the budget before spending the money. In that amendment, they are required to find more revenue to pay for the vehicle or cut budgets elsewhere to fund that amount. The Comptroller for the State of Texas frowns on the municipal practice of ignoring the budget and then amending it at the end of the year to force the budget to reflect actual expenses.
Unbudgeted capital expenses are not legal no matter the amount of money. Budgeted capital expenses over $3000 must be approved by the governing body (city council).
Sauceda's contract was recently re-granted to extend for nineteen months. I guess council likes the job he is doing. Martinez, Rivera and Petrosky voted in favor of that contract.
Let me know what you think of the table. Does it contain too much information? Not enough? Is it clearly presented? How can we make it better? At this point, I don't know if this is a one-shot report or something that will be updated. It depends on your comments and volunteer time. If you have information to be added or changed, just post a comment and someone will take care of it. Keep in mind that this was not done by the city. It was not done with full access to all the documents. Let's keep the comments focused on making this a better document. If the city wants to create a comparable document, I would be happy to post it also.
"An open government is the cornerstone of a free society."
--Texas Attorney General's web site on Open Government
posted by RobC at 8:31 AM
8 Comments:
I made a change requested by phone to correct the purpose of an upcoming ORCA meeting concerning the library grant. Thank you for that correction.
I wonder if the table might be presented in Excel or Word. I would be much easier to handle and print.. thanks to all for their hard work
Thank you for the request. A PDF version is now available. Refresh the table and you will see the link. That should be easier to print. Let me know if you want a version that can be edited. I will contact the author to see if they want to share a .doc version. Let me know if you have problems opening the PDF.
Added EMS grant dollar amounts
"thanks to all" and "the author" ?
sir, do not spill the same pot of beans your are stiring.
"Rob: Council, can I ask that all volunteers working on city projects be identified? I am not comfortable with this."
Dear anon at 7:32PM,
It is an entirely different "pot of beans." The pot I asked about was official city work by a committee formed by the mayor.
The work here was clearly identified: "Keep in mind that this was not done by the city." This work was in no way associated with the city.
I hope you see that the difference is significant. I'll leave your post up for now. I requested: "Let's keep the comments focused on making this a better document."
Constructive criticism is one thing. Anonymous criticism meant to stir things up is another. It is an abuse of the privilege of anonymity. Please be more considerate in the future.
What is it that Flo calls this type of document? A "floating" document? An "unaudited" document? This was created merely as a tracking tool to try and make some kind of sense out of how the grants are so cavalierly handled by the city administrator, mainly to demonstrate that Flo doesn't deserve $15,000 extra a year to write and administer grants. Grant administration is a demanding task with unforgiving deadlines. Flo almost blew the library grant with only two weeks to spare. Rob, I appreciate your formatting this and putting it online. Instead of maintaining my cobbled together table, I will communicate any updates I find to you for implementation online. This is a personal crusade of mine which I do on my own time by monitoring city council meetings. I am familiar with the granting agencies and have a calendar of their deadlines and manuals on grant requirements which can be acquired online should anyone want to take this task on. Signed: Full of Beans
Added ambulance grant work by Bert Legarde. He applied for a $107,000 grant last year with DHS for a new ambulance. The grant was denied. It is an annual grant. He is reapplying this month.
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