Many people may or may not know that the city has an internal auditor. Mr. Rich Oskol is probably (as I tell many people) one of the most valuable city employees. I have often told city councilors and residents he does a fine job with such a small staff, especially with his enormous workload.
But does Mr. Oskol make mistakes? Not sure, but I would guess once in awhile he misses a decimal point. Accounting isn’t an easy task, especially reviewing other people’s work. It was the only HS course I dropped out of. Maybe that is why it has taken me almost 42 years to get my finances in order?
I think it would be safe to assume that Mr. Oskol and his team have audited the Sioux Falls landfill finances at least once since 2009 (When Dan’s garbage service fees started piling up). If this is the case, did Rich make them aware that they probably should be collecting fees from Dan’s Service because they are mounting? Not sure if he did, but I have read several of Rich’s audits of city departments, if anything, Rich is very thorough. He also has the power, granted to him in the city charter, to look at any department’s books without permission, at any time. He reports only to the city council. If the city council called Rich on Monday morning and asked him to start an audit immediately of the city landfill, all Rich would have to do is walk into their office with a two-wheel cart and haul away the filing cabinets, and that department couldn’t do a damn thing to stop him.
Hopefully that phone call will be made Monday morning.
But there is a bigger issue here. Let’s give Mr. Oskol the benefit of the doubt, and let’s say he did recommend that the uncollected fees troublesome and the Landfill should act immediately, that doesn’t mean they have to. Oskol reviews and advises, he may have the authority to wheel off filing cabinets but he can’t make any department head fix a problem. In fact, I do recall a few times where they didn’t, or they tried a different solution.
So it comes back to a question of competence. Who in the city landfill department, or even in the finance or attorney’s offices let this go for so long? And if they haven’t already been terminated, they probably should be.
Sure we can blame Dan, but that’s a whole other story. I think it would be safe to assume the city will not be able to collect all of those fees. The best approach at this point would be to wipe them off the books and put Dan out of business. A court battle will only drain more city resources and really isn’t worth the effort.
The irony of all this is how the city has handled other cases of uncollected ‘fees and fines’;
• An over 8 year court battle which ended up in Supreme Court (in which the city lost) over a couple hundred dollar fine and a cement pad. I can’t even begin to fathom what that costed taxpayers in city resources to fight. In fact two of the city attorneys who worked on the case have been terminated.
• Jailing a resident for 6 hours over a pile of shingles IN HIS FENCED OFF YARD. (of course the county paid that incarceration and court bill) That person also beat the city in court.
• Fining a city employee’s private business over a dumpster enclosure.
• Warning a retired veteran and his wife about a potential fine if they did not remove day lilies from the boulevard.
Yeah, I know what you are thinking, these are code enforcement issues, but isn’t over $250K in unpaid landfill fees a cause for some kind of authority in city hall to do something about it? How are flowers in the boulevard and piles of shingles more concerning then this enormous amount of unpaid fees?
They are not. It is about city employee’s priorities. They seem to put vindictiveness and vendettas against residents over collecting fees.
If I sat on our city’s fine legislative body, the city council, I would be in an uproar. If you think that department heads are tired of swatting away the flies when it comes to the EC siding, they would see a full on bee attack from me as a councilor.
The city council needs to demand an immediate review and presentation from the landfill department as to how this happened, and how the problem will be corrected and lastly who will be reprimanded or terminated over the incident. It’s called ACCOUNTABILITY, something city hall thinks they are immune to.
It also makes you wonder if Dan is the only one that has delinquent fines? That’s a whole other can of worms.
As far as I am concerned this may have nothing to do with Mr. Oskol missing a decimal point, this may have to do with blatant and rampant incompetence. Instead of city directors knocking off at 3:50 PM on a Friday afternoon to enjoy a delicious micro brew at that local watering hole*, maybe they need to take an accounting of there day, week, month, heck decade in the final hours of their work week?
*About a month ago I saw four different city directors/managers drinking beers at a downtown bar at this time, and a manager of a city owned entertainment facility. Even more troubling was they weren’t even drinking together (well maybe that isn’t such a bad thing).
The landfill superintendent was let go several weeks ago. I bet this is the reason why.
Good. But one wonders if ONE person could have managed to let this go for so long? An explanation from the Mayor’s office would be nice. He sits there and talks about ‘learning esperiences’ and ‘communicating’ with the public, but remains silent about this.
We were sold on ‘business executive in government’, yet city policy cost has escalated. Wouldn’t the first step be finding efficiency and improving the balance sheet. All I’ve seen happen is huge debt from building unprofitable sports palaces and failure from prior foolish unpopular construction.
how many other garbage haulers haven’t paid their fees?
The problem is Huether added a layer of bureaucracy in the finance department and put them in charge of everything. You have people straight out of college or less than 2 years experience telling people with 20+ years experience “how things are going to work”.
Not only are many mistakes from the past being repeated, there is now less oversight than there was before. The departments don’t have access to the information anymore so they assume finance is doing it. Finance isn’t doing anything but pointing fingers because “they’re in charge”. No communication at all.
While I believe I understand what Huether was trying to do – have finance control all purchasing so they could say “no” and cut down on spending, mostly what it has done is added waste: wasted time, wasted money on the wrong or inferior equipment, and wasted salaries on an added layer of red tape.
If Huether can’t trust his directors or use his superior “business acumen” to tell when a department is padding their budget, maybe he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.
City Hall isn’t being run like a municipal government, nor is it being run like a business. It is a sad state of affairs that one person could make so many unproductive and costly changes.
Huether is the perfect example of why a city this size (and larger) needs a professional city manager that reports to the city council. The one-man behind the scene agendas need to stop.
While I agree our ‘dictatorship’ form of government in SF isn’t working, it will require the citizens to have a petition drive to revoke the city’s home rule charter before we see any change.