NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- After nearly six business days, NSBNEWS.net finally received financial information from the city of New Smyrna Beach pertaining to the breakdown of information between base pay and gross salary of municipal salaries for the Web site's series "Show me the money."
An excel file with 3,309 entries was forwarded to NSBNEWS.net from the NSB Clerk's Office at 3:51 p.m. Monday.
Asked if there was any kind of consolidated report, City Clerk Johnny Bledsoe said he was informed by Finance Director Carol Rogers that there was not one.
NSBNEWS.net asked Bledsoe how it was to interpret the 3,309 lines of data without a code sheet, which was not included. Bledsoe said he would try and get it before the end of the business day.
At 6 p.m., Rogers sent NSBNEWS.net an e-mail containing three pages worth of codes to explain the 3,309 data entries. NSBNEWS.net had asked Rogers for this information Monday, Oct. 5, and followed up with a second request to the City Clerk's Office on Wednesday, Oct. 7. Why it took the better part of six days for NSBNEWS.net to receive what was clearly public record has not been explained by city officials.
Mayor Sally Mackay said she was not aware of any problem and could not do anything about it since NSBNEWS.net contacted her at 5:05 p.m. Monday while she was out campaigning. She said when she was first told of the problem last Wednesday by NSBNEWS.net that since that time she thought it had been taken care of.
NSBNEWS.net informed the mayor at 5:05 p.m. Monday it was considering seeking redress from the courts.
Fifty-five minutes later NSBNEWS.net received the codes from Rogers in an e-mail with an explanation that she had simply forgotten to include the codes. NSBNEWS.net does not know if the mayor spoke with Rogers in the interim.
NSBNEWS.net will try and get this important information out to the public as soon as possible. NSBNEWS.net finds it incredulous how the city's elected officials can vote on a $20 million budget without information sorted and codified that explains what individual employees are receiving, which is the whole point of this series, "Show me the money."
Here is one example:
City Attorney Frank Gummey
Gross Pay: $216,117.70
Base Pay: $173,267.20
Personal Time: $357.20
Dept. Head Personal Leave: $3,214.80
Dept. Head Holiday: $6,429.60
**FL Dept. Head Floating Holiday: $1,428.80
Personal Leave Incentive: $9,463.30
Car Allowance City Attorney: $5,200
**Non-Cash Life Insurance: $526.35 **Non-Cash ICMA CA: $16,230.45.
Note: Gross pay is total monies paid. Each category is cash received in employee's pay checks. This is the breakdown of what Gummey received for fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 31.
** No explanation was provided in the code sheet to explain what these items are.