It’s now been 3 weeks since Town Manager Will McKannay put Community Development Director Frankie Kropacek and Community Services Director Jeff Hague on paid administrative leave. As of Thursday afternoon an outside forensic accounting firm has not yet been hired.
On Beach Talk Radio last Sunday McKannay said he we close to hiring a firm. He said hiring the firm would cost approximately $50,000 and their investigation would take about 4 weeks. The issue was not discussed at Monday’s Town Council meeting. We were told Thursday that the town’s legal department is looking over the contract.
At the heart of the investigation is grant money and how much of those taxpayer dollars may have been mishandled, if any. Everything Hague and Kropacek had their hands in is being looked at. Hague and Kropacek were promoted when Andy Hyatt was the Town Manager. The investigation will go back to at least then, if not further. At this point nobody has indicated money was stolen. The focus seems to be on poor management, not illegal actions.
Earlier this week, McKannay added new responsibilities to Deputy Town Manager Tracey Kohler’s plate. She will also now be Interim Community Development Director until further notice. That was the job Kropacek held until he was put on paid administrative. Koheler was not given a pay raise at the time the announcement was made to give her more work to do.
As soon as we know who the 3rd party firm is, and exactly how much it will cost taxpayers, we will share that information.
I agree with the previous comments; if their work is unsatisfactory or suspicious, simply fire them or place them on unpaid leave until the investigation has been completed. Otherwise, the taxpayers’ money is being wasted.
It’s not completely unreasonable to hire a third party to unravel a mess caused by either dishonest or incompetent employees. If you know your employees were not doing their job effectively, terminate their employment. Why would the Town Manager spend $50 K if he didn’t have a mess to clean up?
How lucky that we happen to have the eminently well-qualified Tracey Kohler on Town staff because the School District of Lee County saw fit to kill off the Beach School.
It’s my understanding Florida is an “at-will employment” state, which generally means an employer can terminate an employee at any time, with or without giving a reason, and generally without advance notice.
In Florida, you generally CAN fire an employee because:
Their performance isn’t satisfactory.
You don’t think they’re a good fit.
You want to restructure the position.
You simply don’t want to continue employing them.
You don’t have a particular reason and don’t want to provide one.
Instead the town is choosing to keep these employees on paid leave, dump their job responsibilities on other employees (without an increase in pay) and then pay a third party company $50K+ to perform a month long audit or more (all while the employees remain on paid leave) to verify wrongdoing/mishandling of funds when the end result will most likely be the same …. they are fired or they quit and the town has spent $100K+ to reach the same result. Seems like a big waste of taxpayer money!
Transparency is becoming an issue and it’s driving suspicion. These BTR threads have for months been exposing its growth .
Will insists town hall is transparent, open government, obeying all the laws.
He and a few council members will call the critics misinformed or uninformed of florida law. They’ll tell us we know all they know.
As suspicions climb expect them to regale residents with a renewed dedication to transparency.
Perhaps Will himself will announce it instead of sending the flack, and exhaust us with another stale assurance of how dedicated he and council are to transparency.
Secrecy is a choice. And a habit.
Elections are extractions.
Choose daylight.
Insist these candidates tell you what they’d do to guarantee it.
How about no pay while off and IF no wrong doing found, retro pay them? This is ridiculous! There’s no pressure to get this done quickly otherwise.
Good idea Carol
So dump more work on Tracey but keep paying the dude that is trouble ? And people wonder why work place morale sucks ?