The reports from Rick Woodman, John Cheney and Mark Schaefer including the CAFR, detail a common theme of what appears to be rank incompetence on the part of the department directors in Public Utilities, Public Works and in Finance.
Manager Kisela has not taken any action to curtail what appears to be rather moronic practices that are carried out daily in each of these departments. Indeed he continues to provide explanations if not excuses for each of those department heads. This likely CONFIRMS that his standards and expectations are being met .
The consideration thus becomes do those department heads have the requisite qualifications, experience and ability to lead these departments in a competent fashion, AND conversely do Woodman, Chaney, Schaefer and myself have it all wrong.
To answer that important question I would call upon Council and our candidates both incumbents and challengers alike to encourage the Manager to detail with great specificity the qualifications and experience of his department heads in Finance, Utilities and Works AND FURTHER explain why the daily work practices of their departments should not be considered moronic, DESPITE common sense observations to the contrary, including the numerous photos that have been reported on this blog.
If the Manager is unwilling or unable to provide a convincing narrative, or if that narrative sounds more like a fantasy, remember that the main claim to fame for 2 of that illustrious trio is the fact that they are ex city managers …….. ICMA retreads so to speak.
None of this is acceptable.
The hard working residents of Port Orange deserve far more for their tax dollar than the circus like care the Dunlawton medians are receiving on a seemingly daily basis.
They deserve far better than over paid Utilities leadership un-concerned with un-safe work condition and resulting OSHA violations, AND whose handling of the recent water line tap was akin to what one might expect if the next space shuttle launch were assigned to a gas station attendant and that attendant was having a bad day.
AND MOST OF ALL they deserve a Finance department possessing real, verifiable and demonstrable talent in accounting, financial statement preparation, customer service and purchasing.
A department whose reporting is not habitually late, habitually incomplete and in the case of the purchasing component – totally screwed up.
A department whose work ethic and work product is not so slipshod as to be deserving of the following comment on page 3 of the Auditor’s management letter dated March 18th 2014
Significant Difficulties Encountered during the Audit Although we ultimately received full cooperation of management and believe that we were given direct and unrestricted access to the City’s books and records, we experienced significant difficulties in the performance of the audit due to the requested audit schedules and final trial balance not being ready for audit within the timeframe initially agreed upon. We were originally scheduled to start the audit on December 2, 2013, but finally started fieldwork on January 6, 2014. However, upon this delayed start, many requested schedules and year-end adjustments had not been completed by the City, and supporting work papers for some of the significant audit areas were not received until the last week of January. The related rescheduling, follow-up, and recording of management-provided journal entries significantly added to the time and related cost of the audit. Considering this is a fixed-price engagement, this situation will not be allowed to occur in future years. We will not begin fieldwork for the 2014 audit until all of the City’s year-end adjustments have been recorded and all requested work papers have been completed and provided to us. If we need to reschedule, this will likely result in delaying the start of the audit to late March or April.
On Tuesday morning the News Journal ran a story detailing one salient fact arising from the Holly Hill annual audit, AND the City Manager was rather defiant as quoted in that news story.
By Tuesday afternoon the City manager had handed in his resignation, AND he did so because three or more of the Holly Hill council told him they had had enough.
Port Orange gets pages of Audit comments far more concerning than the Holly hill comment, AND the Port Orange council takes what action exactly ???????????
There are two guys that work in the utilities dept. that should be running the show. I won’t mention their names because they would probably be fired. They hold the highest licenses in their field with about 60 years of combined experience in utilities.They are two of the most intelligent, innovative and knowledgeable people I have ever met in my 41 years in the Biz.
The city needs to clean house in the utilities administration and promote these guys. They will fix what needs to be fixed. They keep hiring yes men puppets, desk jockeys with college degrees and no practical work experience. These people can’t cut.it They know almost nothing about the business and they never will if they won’t listen to their people.
From Ted Noftall:
There are two guys that work in the utilities dept. that should be running the show. I won’t mention their names because they would probably be fired. They hold the highest licenses in their field with about 60 years of combined experience in utilities.They are two of the most intelligent, innovative and knowledgeable people I have ever met in my 41 years in the Biz.
The city needs to clean house in the utilities administration and promote these guys. They will fix what needs to be fixed. They keep hiring yes men puppets, desk jockeys with college degrees and no practical work experience. These people can’t cut.it They know almost nothing about the business and they never will if they won’t listen to their people.