By Terry Witt -Spotlight Senior Reporter
A goodwill gesture by the Williston Department of Public Works to cook a holiday breakfast for City Hall employees and give them $150 gift certificates turned sour when the police, fire, and airport employees got nothing.
DPW generated $5,530 by selling a scrap metal pile behind the City Barn to pay for the 37 Tractor Supply gift certificates for City Hall employees, but some of that scrap metal was contributed by the departments that were left out.
City Council President Debra Jones said city staff has done a good job of investigating the scrap pile history and how the money has been used since 2013 to buy useful items for city employees.
She said they haven’t determined at this point who made the decision to change the practice of using the money for practical gift items to purchasing gift certificates for City Hall employees. Many of the DPW employees are out with COVID and can’t be interviewed.
Jones said the city is now officially calling the money generated from the sale of scrap metal the “scrap metal fund,” but she said more needs to be done to make the process of spending it more consistent from year to year.
“I do believe we need a policy that goes along with the scrap metal fund, which is what we’re calling it now. We need to decide who is contributing to it and if the other departments have their own budget line item (for scrap metal),” she said. “They need to end up with their funds and their department head would decide how to spend it. Either that or we need to put them all together and divide it equally amongst everybody. We don’t need to be leaving people out.”
In hindsight, knowing what she knows now, Jones said she personally would have preferred to give all city employees $100 rather than give City Hall workers $150.
Jones said the sale of the scrap metal has always resulted in the money being deposited in the city budget but she said it wasn’t audited because it was simply a line item in the budget and the auditors didn’t specifically cull out that line item for review.
The city council president said she attended the holiday breakfast at City Hall and received a Christmas card signed by all the employees of the Department of Public Works, which she appreciated, but it didn’t contain a $150 gift certificate for Tractor Supply. She had no idea that each of the Christmas cards handed out to the 37 City Hall workers contained a $150 gift certificate for Tractor Supply.
“It was probably a week to 10 days later we heard through the grapevine, like you, that all the other Christmas cards had a gift card in them. It was a Tractor Supply gift card,” she said. “How I heard about it, the mayor called me and asked me if I knew they gave away Tractor Supply gift cards in the Christmas cards. I said I did not, and that’s when we started trying to figure out what went on.”
Jones said they found out from city Financial Director Steven Bloom that the scrap funded dated back to 2013 and was started by former City Manager Scott Lippmann as a way to boost employee morale. City Manager Jackie Gorman quoted from an agenda item in 2013 in which Lippmann explained how the scrap money would be used.
“I have also instituted several operational changes which I believe will help employee morale and improve our operations generally: Proceeds from the sale of scrap metal and other materials will be placed into a designated account for the benefit of public works employees. We will use these funds to supplement our budget to purchase needed safety equipment and to provide the crews with other items which will help promote a sense of pride in the City and cohesiveness within the department (public works hats, jackets, and similar items.)
Jones said one year Gorman recalls that she and city council members received black jackets bearing the city logo one year from the sale of scrap metal by public works.
“When I began as City Planner, I did remember our Public Works Director telling me that there was a fund that was to be used at his discretion for materials and equipment from a ‘Scrap fund.’ He then gave me a City jacket and also purchased jackets for other staff and council. So, using the funds outside of public works staff was acceptable and that precedence had been established,” Gorman wrote in an email to Spotlight. Gorman said she didn’t receive a gift certificate from DPW this year nor did council members.
Jones said Gorman knew in advance about the intent of public works in giving out gift cards at the pre-Christmas holiday breakfast, but she also knew that a precedent had existed since she arrived at the city as the city planner allowing for the money to be spent on gift items that staff could use for work.
“This time, it was just done in a little different manner,” Jones said.
Police Chief Dennis Strow said he checked with his staff and they found no line item in the police budget for scrap metal. He said his department doesn’t contribute much to the scrap metal pile behind the City Barn but it has never received any money back from the city for the scrap it contributed to the pile, either.
Strow said when he has a surplus patrol car it gets sold and money from the sale goes back to the portion of the budget that is used to purchase patrol cars, which reduces the amount of tax money spent buying new cars. But he said there was nothing in his budget for scrap metals.
As for the holiday party, he said his department wasn’t invited, nor was the fire department or airport employees.
Strow said his suggestion to Gorman was to create ‘different scrap bins” for the various departments. The airport would have a scrap bin, police a scrap bin, fire a scrap bin, and public works a scrap bin. When the scrap was sold the money would go back to the department that contributed the scrap.
“I think that’s what she is thinking about doing because this kind of caught her off guard. I think it needs to go back to the budget that it came from,” Strow said. “That’s my feeling. That’s kind of out of my wheelhouse but that was my suggestion to her.”
Strow said he doesn’t think anyone can anticipate how much scrap they might have in a given year. He said this year, he had more than usual because the department was doing some spring cleaning to complete the buildout of its upstairs area. He said the department has been working on the renovation project for a while. Strow said he also suggested Gorman talk to Spotlight when she was called. Gorman responds only to emails from Spotlight.
Strow said the city needs to figure out what happened and move on.
“It’s one of those things, if it’s a screw-up, you say it’s a screw-up and move on,” Strow said. “Again, sometimes you are stuck with the card or the deck that was dealt to you. This was kind of dealt to her (Gorman) and you say, this is what we’re going to do in the future. My suggestion to her was if you want to do separate scrap piles, you put all that back into the general fund. Otherwise divide it and put it back in the budget.”
One of the shortcomings of the procedure for spending the scrap fund money is that it never came to the city council for review and approval and there was no set policy for how the money should be spent, or who would receive the benefit of the funds. Without a council review, the money was never publicly discussed. The lack of public disclosure had been a common practice in years past.
Jones said there was a separate Christmas party held for citywide employees at the Williston Woman’s Club, but by the time the Christmas party occurred, the gift cards had been given out at the earlier holiday breakfast.
“This breakfast was sponsored entirely by public works. They did all the cooking and provided all the food. They invited who they wanted to invite. They didn’t invite police, fire, and airport. It was strictly anyone who worked in City Hall properly and council members,” she said. “It’s going to come up at a city council meeting to figure out what to do about next year.
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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt January 18, 2022; Posted January 18, 2022
