Today marks 10 days since Town Manager Will McKannay put Community Development Director Frankie Kropacek and Community Services Director Jeff Hague on paid administrative leave. Where does the investigation stand today?
According to the town’s Public Information Officer Abigail Eberhart, McKannay is wrestling with whether or not to spend the money for a 3rd party outside company to help with the investigation. At the heart of the investigation is money and how much of those taxpayer dollars may have been mishandled, if any.
While it’s crystal clear to everyone that only an outside investigation will have any credibility with taxpayers, hiring a 3rd party firm to conduct a credible forensic audit is not cheap, and the town isn’t flush with cash. Every penny counts when you’re investigating grant money you spent that may never be reimbursed or other funds you used that you may have to give back. It looks as if McKannay may bring the 3rd party proposal cost to the Town Council on Monday for their input.
This is a very serious situation the town is facing and there may be more shoes to drop. Everything Hague and Kropacek had their hands in is being looked at according to Eberhart. 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 as of now is poor management, not illegal actions, but what are the taxpayers to believe when very little information is being shared.
So as of today there is no firm helping the investigation and there is no time frame to complete the investigation. And, the taxpayers wait to see if anything went afoul with their money.
I just sold my beautiful property on FMB. There are many lovely places to live in Florida, I no longer wanted to live were it is so poorly managed
and it has been for years. We have been complaining about the mayors and town council members forever, unfortunately because of IAN the situation is no longer just an annoyance.
At what point do we stop looking only at the directors and start looking for accountability from the people ultimately responsible for leading our town, including the mayor?
Eight revealing words from Tom Brady regarding these suspensions.
“For reasons the town has not been informed.”
They are reminders of the myth of transparency at Town Hall.
Some examples:
1. Individual council members disappears behind closed doors with special interest developers asking for deals and favors. Afterward, they fail to tell you what was said or how those meetings contributed to their decision to approve the development with little explanation why. (The intent of our Sunshine Law is too assure that every step of the decision making process be done in public. Those private meetings should be considered a step in that process despite its omission from the law )
2. The manager’s expansion of his bureacracy has been done in the dark. Hiring may be the statutory responsibility of the manager but the additional hires and subsequent expenses those hires create are the oversight responsibility of the council. It doesn’t exist publicly.
Where is all that oversight being done? Sure hasn’t been where you get a seat.
3. The administration has stopped doing employee exit interviews, denying the public access to employee complaints about the workplace environment, allegations of wrongdoing, failed or biased policies and employee unrest. Obviously this administration doesn’t want you knowing it.
4. They have too long failed to discuss, at least publicly, questions surrounding the mystery of missing emergency funds.
Are they discussing it individually in the privacy of the manager’s office, avoiding a public screening and the public’s right to know?
Seems exit interviews should be policy set by that elected board. As policy, an administrator, such as the human resourses director and manager, can’t unillateraly toss it.
6. They refuse to publicly discuss their thoughts on issues coming to the council. There is no law against doing so. No law against a public official offering their thought process on most impending issues. Only, apparently, a town attorney telling them they shouldn’t. The Sunshine Law prohibits only private discussion between two or more members of the same council from discussing those issues, a deterent to the back room deal-making on votes.
7. Resident after resident has complained of not receiving their requested public records for days, weeks or not at all. Courts long have ruled that’s not good enough. This administration seems to believe it is. Except for large bundles of documents there’s no excuse for taking days or weeks to fork over a public record. Denying them is illegal. So is charging an exhorbitant price for a document easily accessible.
The interminable denial of your right to know was ended in Florida in 1967 when Republican Governor Claude Roy Kirk signed the democratic Legislature’s comprehensive open government Sunshine Law.
The boasts of transparency that flow from town hall are beyond a joke. They’re an entire episode of Saturday Night Live.
Paid Leave – I do not agree. I have been a hiring manager for over 35 years.
Two town employees were put on paid leave for reasons the public has not been informed. Town Employees are “at-will” employees – employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, or for no reason, except an illegal one (discrimination).
Putting employees on paid leave is a disservice to the employees put on leave, the other employees of the town, and the taxpayers. It creates public suspicion and can unfairly damage the reputations of the employees. Other employees must pick up the slack. Taxpayers pay for not working.
Managers need to manage. HR is an advisor. If employees are under performing – put them on a performance improvement plan. If there is suspected wrongdoing and you have evidence, then confront the employees. You make the call if they are lying and take immediate action. Dragging out the process is not more humane, it is less humane. This is not the Federal Government or the Army.
100%. No paid leave!! Completely unfair to the co-workers left behind to pick up the extra work and taxpayers! Ridiculous! If they are found not to be at fault of any wrongdoing, then give them back pay.
What happen to the FEMA grant money to help the people whom applied and where told they were accepted to the program to elevate their homes? Is that all gone? I was told the town had received the money.
I contacted the Mayor on this subject. I received a nice letter back from the vice town manager. I asked if this was still happening. No direct yes or no response. No present timeline is available. Tital Basin will contact us once the town knows
more. Got my property tax notification in the mail today. Very cruel joke.
Isn’t it time to go ask our auditors WTH?