UPDATE: HEROES INVOICES BELOW
Here we go again. In 2009, my last year as a Council Member and Chairperson of the Budget Committee, I started a three year search for documents that would validate my claim that the City was overpaying CDM for management and oversight services for our $52 million Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). I continued my search after becoming Mayor in 2010. Over the next two years, I was unable to locate invoices for the spending that I knew was being done. Only two Council Members, Myron Cook and Marcel Reed believed me. I compiled a packet of Minutes documenting CIP voted expenditures. I kept a log of contracts, agreements, and requests for MCT payments and I still could not locate invoices and nor did Staff provide any via open records requests. I took my packet to Federal Attorney General Sally Yates. Attorney Yates and four FBI agents met with me and went over the Minutes, logs and Budget Committee documents that I had prepared. After my explanations and answers to their questions, I was told that I had very legitimate concerns but no invoices or whistleblower’s support. AG Yates suggested that I take my information to Fulton County District Attorney’s Integrity Unit. I did and I met with DA Paul Howard and two members of the Integrity Unit. They told me that I needed concrete documents or whistleblower support.
I had a meeting with Finance Committee Chairperson Marcel Reed concerning purchase orders. He requested an investigation based on discrepancies that he had already discovered. During his Finance Committee Report to the Council, he moved that the City institute a forensic audit report of the Purchasing Department with CM Cook seconding. Mayor and Council voted for the Forensic Audit Report and hired a forensic auditor in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In his Final Forensic Audit Report he stated the following:
- From 2000 to 2012, the City had paid out $200 million in purchase orders without a single itemized invoice.
- The City had paid CDM purchase orders off the books for a year.
Based on those two items in the Final Forensic Audit Report, and additional documents by City Attorney Corliss Lawson the Council unanimously voted to fire CDM. After what other Council Members labelled as my “obsession” and wolf crying, my claim of overpayment of $4 million was validated. NOW, the City and Council are playing that same old shell game again. There is no way that CDM did what it did without knowledge and support of the majority of the Council and key Staff Members. It is happening again, only this time I am wiser and better prepared. Uncomfortable with my statements that the creation of a City Council Department in the FY2020 Adopted Budget with an Executive was not only a violation of the City’s form of Government but the itemized list of line item expenditures by the Mayor and individual Council Members violated the State Gratuity Clause and the City’s Expenditures Policy.
In order for Mayor and Council to deflect their wrongdoings and at the same time keep up their illegal pet projects spending, money covering those expenditures were moved to a different Department within the Budget. Their scheme was working until, CM Sharon Shropshire announced the City of East Point Wednesday Wind Down Covid-19 Fund Raiser. The FY2021 Adopted Budget did not contain any funding for the Event in the City Council Budget. So, again I started looking for the source and authorizer of the financial expenditures for the Event via open records requests. Staff was unable to provide any information for my requests and Mayor and Council played dead. So, I called City Manager Fred Gardiner who informed me that all Council Event spending in the amount of $200,000 had been moved to an unrestricted account in the Non-Departmental Budget in a document that he would send to me. He did and the document is in a binder not the Adopted Budget posted on the City’s website. CLICK HERE: Non-Departmental August ORR
I have made the following open records requests trying to track down the amount of the request and the authorizer of the request. CLICK HERE:Wednesday Wind Down Funding Source
Fellow residents, I am no longer an elected official nor do I want to be one, however holding the Mayor and Council accountable for the expenditures of the City’s financial and physical resources is the responsibility of all of the residents. I am not interesting in leading a Residential Watchdog Group that is so desperately needed. I am more than happy to share the knowledge that I gained as an elected official and continue to build on with any oversight group. Too many residents like to post on Facebook opinions not supported by facts that are misleading and designed to cause division. I have always documented my actions and I stand by what I say until the facts change and I then make sure to update the corrections. East Point needs all of its residents to care about our City and make sure that our City is working for all of us and not just for some of us.
UPDATE: Wednesday Wind Down Covid-19 Heroes Fund Raising Event INVOICES!
Here are the requested open records requests for the invoices showing what the City paid for this Event that violates our Charter and State Statues. This is one of the reasons why I am having the Car Parade Protest. CLICK HERE:Heroes Benefit Invoices (1)
