What triggered the cancellation of a second scheduled Marietta City Council public meeting review for the Fiscal Year 2021 Community Development Block Grant funds this week?
The joint Planning, Zoning, Annexation and Housing Committee combined with Finance Committee was canceled immediately before the series of Marietta City Council meetings were broadcast via Facebook Live Thursday.
PZAH Chairman Geoff Schenkel said Thursday following the rest of the scheduled meetings that he had met with Safety-Service Director Steve Wetz on Thursday afternoon to preview the following reasons why, if Finance Chairman Mike Scales, Law Director Paul Bertram and the administration chose to still proceed with the city development director’s recommended budget presented to council on Aug. 13 and modified through the morning of Aug. 27, Schenkel would be forced to call upon the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Inspector General to initiate an audit into the past and present practices concerning the federal grant program.
By Thursday morning, five iterations of recommendation spreadsheets had been presented to the Times, four of which were made available for all members of council perusal by Thursday morning.
In the six-page packet Schenkel presented to Wetz, provided to the Times, and according to the councilman digitally distributed to his peers on council, the councilman outlined not only a timeline of instances where the development office was given the opportunity to course-correct, but also why what was available for council discussion Thursday still would require an audit review if introduced for legislation.
Schenkel said Thursday that his meeting with Wetz prompted a pause on moving forward due to Wetz’s decision to call off Thursday’s meeting while the concerns noted in the packet are addressed.
Wetz could not be reached for comment either Thursday or Friday, but did explain to the Times on Aug. 21 the steps he and Jeff Skinner, assistant safety-service director and human resources director, took to find missing documents in the first and second iterations of Development Director Mike Gulliver’s recommendation spreadsheet.
He said that he (Wetz) and Skinner spent three hours finding missing documents on Aug. 21.
Then on the following Monday, Wetz, Schenkel and the Times met for an additional 1.5 hours to review those documents and resolve inconsistent request tallies noted in Gulliver’s documents with the tallies of public records provided to the Times.
Depending on the final location of a singular missing citizen request for funds, the new documented request tally arrived at between Wetz, Schenkel and the Times was 247.
Of that 247:
-214 were advocating for 29 citizen-driven projects.
-28 were advocating for nonprofit-driven projects.
-One was submitted on behalf of an ongoing partnership with an outside government agency.
-One was submitted by a councilman.
-And two administration-driven projects ideas were requested by a total of three beneficiaries of the city payroll.
No documentation specifically requested funding for the underutilized, and by public records evidence often-rerouted housing programs’ funding for Paint Marietta or Emergency Repair or other undisclosed uses within the housing spreadsheet lines on any of the five drafted spreadsheets.
Schenkel’s six-page packet provided to city officials and the Times on Thursday identifies the following:
-There is still one unaccounted-for citizen request, which Schenkel identified as a HUD “red flag.”
“Without explanation, a citizen request noted on both the first and second spreadsheets produced by the development office has disappeared from the fifth,” he wrote. “No request document to accompany a total as specific as $3,415 is of the type of unaccounted-for element that triggers fraud investigations.”
He also reiterated a concern voiced not only in the three public meetings held by the development office to take requests between July 13 and July 27, but also on Aug. 13 by Councilwoman Cassidi Shoaf, that no new, and HUD-required, three-year consolidated plan yet exists or has been properly formed per HUD regulation.
“Every pink/purple row represents a HUD red flag because there cannot be a three-year plan right now. The city has not completed any of the legal steps to fulfill HUD requirements of its creation,” he explained. “There are 11-14 HUD red flags because the claims referencing a (three)-year plan in the notes column are untruthful.”
But the largest section of Schenkel’s cover sheet emphasizes his third objection.
“Housing-related programs do not even approach past acceptable standard levels of specificity. Not only is this a giant HUD red flag, I fear we are witnessing a gross mismanagement of funds, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority and are approaching fraud,” he wrote, citing the HUD Office of the Inspector General’s website and city ledger and account numbers.
On that cover sheet, the councilman also illustrated the two final points with pie charts to breakout how more than one-third of the recommendations listed by Gulliver “misrepresent truth” in the existence of a properly completed consolidated three-year plan, and how a trend within the last year causes alarm.
“(The) trend is going in [the] wrong direction for programs of questionable legitimacy and no evidence of proven success,” he wrote.
That cover sheet, of the six-page packet, then summarizes not only the document Schenkel submitted with a legislative request to introduce a scoring rubric before new action on Fiscal Year 2021 budgeting continues on Aug. 13, but also what he called the next set of “consequences” as outlined in five pages of a detailed timeline with adjoining action steps and assignments.
“I will not advance any recommendation through the legislative process without all three of the following: 1. Fulfilling the requirements of an acceptable three-year plan as required by HUD; 2. A legislated scoring rubric in place before recommendations are brought forward; (and) 3. The completion of a joint public committee meeting with our new HUD representative (as) consistently requested since November 2019.”
The following five pages outlined assignments to the administration on Aug. 13 to:
– Recount the submitted and documented requests.
-Advertise for a minimum of two public meetings as established in the 2018-20 three-year consolidated plan (page 15 ” “‘Summary of citizen participation process/Efforts made to broaden citizen participation … how to broaden impacted goal-setting’ by scheduling in established neighborhood facilities to encourage and simplify citizen, organization and administration attendance as promised by HUD to set shared community priorities and re-examine past funding priorities.”
The councilman noted in this section that in the city’s last HUD-approved consolidated plan for 2018-2020, that citizen participation “is the foundation and frame work of the entire CDBG budget and plan. The process establishes goal setting and priorities for achievable CDBG projects and programs.”
According to HUD, the advertising minimum is a set of legal ads taken out in the newspaper of record, which in this case is the Times.
-Conduct both meetings as advertised.
-Compile neighborhood, organizational and administrative priorities reported by attendees in both meetings.
-Then to review the entire compilation without recommendations offered with Marietta City Council.
The councilman also noted in his timeline that on Aug. 13, he submitted a legislation request to Bertram with the initial intent for the scoring rubric to be introduced and moved to a vote on Aug. 20’s regular business meeting.
By Aug. 20, however, the legislation was not drafted, to which Bertram explained he needed to consult with HUD as to the accepted scoring practices by the federal agency.
Schenkel submitted research documents for other entitlement agencies which already have such scoring rubrics in place not only to Wetz on Aug. 24, but also to Bertram on Aug. 26.
Council members Schenkel, Scales, Shoaf and Susan Boyer also on Aug. 20 called upon Bertram to schedule a public meeting with the city’s new HUD representative.
Schenkel indicates in his submitted timeline that at the joint public committee meeting council may not only “confirm grading rubric viability” but also find answers to “additional questions concerning past practices in administering CDBG process to prevent further red flags which would trigger a HUD audit.”
Beneath that summation of the Aug. 20 takeaways, in a bolded red section, Schenkel wrote the following warning:
“Do not proceed with legislation for either: 1. FY 2021 CDBG Budget; (or) 2. 2021-23 Consolidated Plan until all six steps above are properly completed as outlined by HUD and as requested by council to prevent triggering an audit by HUD.”
The final section of Schenkel’s timeline and warning states that if the spreadsheets submitted by the development office as late as 8:17 a.m. Thursday were used to proceed with legislation, “I will initiate a HUD audit.”
What’s next
Now that the trajectory towards legislation without completing the outlined steps has paused, council and the administration may take the time to address the concerns as outlined, but at this point are not expected to conduct the previously scheduled public hearings throughout September and early October, until resolutions can be reached and new dates can be scheduled.
Janelle Patterson may be reached at [email protected].
