DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — For the past month, 9 Investigates has been diving into public records related to spending habits of Daytona Beach city employees, and Wednesday night city commissioners heard from the auditor they hired to investigate and how the city manager plans to address the issues.
Daytona Beach City Manager Deric Feacher has created a committee focused on coming up with new standards for spending taxpayer money. It’s in response to our investigation into possible misspending on city credit cards.
Since then, City Auditor Abinet Belachew has looked into the travel and car allowance policies. He shared those results with commissioners Wednesday.
“Whether its nefarious, incompetence, ignorance, the result is the same, the damage is the same,” Belachew said.
He also told commissioners he dealt with unnecessary defensiveness from city employees during his investigation.
“Until we have a culture of transparency, accountability, a willingness to make change, we will have the same problem,” Belachew said.
The city manager asked his new government relations coordinator to share what’s been done so far. He explained his team has looked at policies for credit cards, travel and car allowances and maintained they haven’t found misuse, only very vague policies.
The coordinator said they’ve already come up with new approval processes for spending and travel and created new per diem policies that align with federal standards.
A commissioner questioned the city manager about his responsibility to handle these issues.
“Do you acknowledge its your responsibility as city manager for policy updates and also to let the commissioners know when policies are outdated and need to be updated,” Commissioner Monica Paris asked.
“Yes, it is my responsibility as city manager to make updates and make recommendations,” Feacher said.
The city manager said his new committee has policies drafted that will eventually be brought to the commission to approve.
During the meeting, the auditor said he’s been made aware of a possible inappropriate relationship between two employees who may have used city credit cards to pay for personal time together. Commissioners voted to have the auditor investigate if it’s true.
Here’s a 9 Investigates timeline to date:
On Nov. 5, a city commissioner brought up concerns about misspending on city credit cards.
That week, Channel 9 started going through 500 pages of city credit card purchases and found thousands of dollars spent at retail stores and restaurants.
Then on Nov. 17, a travel expense report we exposed showed the city could have saved more than $120,000 in a year on travel if it was being more closely monitored.
Finally, WFTV showed you the city auditor’s results from his review of the car allowance policy which showed more than 85 employees get paid an allowance on top of their annual salary and benefits, they range from $1300 to $1200 a year.
Since our 9 Investigates probe began, the city manager has suspended all city credit cards and created a new website to show all of the transactions made on them.
Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.