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Since taking office Councilor Rotondo worked with Mayor Ambrosino to bring accountability to the City of Revere. Councilor Rotondo scrutinized the City’s $130 million dollar budget and found discrepancies; these discrepancies lead him to the DPW.
Accountability:
- In 2006, Councilor Rotondo fought to stop city employees from doing private drain-laying jobs on city time using DPW equipment . He fought many public officials in city government who believed he is was on a "witchhunt".
- George continued the fight and the two DPW employees were found guilty of using city equipment on city time and paid a fine and resigned.
- During this same period Councilor Rotondo fought to have an audit of the DPW conducted, put GPS in DPW vechiles and impliment a bar code system to stop mismanagement and protect your tax dollars.
- In 2008 an Audit of the DPW was finally conducted and the City implemented the GPS system and started the bar-code inventory system. Today we are on the right path because of George.
Click here to review the full DPW Audit: www.revere.org/DPW Audit part1.pdf
Boston Globe story:
“Audit hits DPW on oversight - Report cites lack of gas-use controls”
By Katheleen Conti
Globe Staff / November 23, 2008
REVERE -- A state audit has found that Revere's Public Works Department lacked oversight over certain operations, including handling cash and distributing gas from city-owned pumps.
The 25-page report from state auditor Joseph DeNucci's office, released Tuesday, states that 46,243 gallons of taxpayer-funded gas was pumped by city employees in a two-year period without an adequate regulatory system. That number is out of 121,510 total gallons used by city workers, the report said.
"We found that this system could not adequately ensure that gasoline was being utilized for city-related activities only," the audit report stated. "We found that this system's controls can be, and during our audit period frequently were, overridden."
"Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for a jackhammer three times," said City Councilor George Rotondo. "The issue here is preventing tax increases when possible. All this does is create efficiency, more accountability, and ensures that people get what they paid for."
But the audit points out that the DPW overrode the system 1,381 times while pumping 17,182 gallons of gas. It also found that three of five DPW employees who sometimes use their personal vehicles for city business exceeded their 10-gallons-per-week allowance, one of them by more than 1,400 gallons during the audit period, which went undetected by DPW staff.
"There is inadequate assurance that all of the gasoline used by the city, which totaled 121,510 gallons for all city departments during our audit period, was used for city-related purposes only," the audit states. |
