Katy Blevins of East Point has been keeping careful track of the charges placed on the city manager's credit card, and she doesn't like what she's seeing.
Blevins says she has tracked more than $45,000 in purchases charged to City Manager Crandall Jones' city-issued card in slightly more than three years, including a $310 charge at a local restaurant for an employee luncheon.
Jones said this week that about $8,000 of the charges were incurred by his predecessor before Jones became city manager in 2007. In addition, for much of the three-year period Blevins is examining, Jones said, all city departments charged expenses to a single account -- the city manager’s account. As a result, he said, the overall sum is not excessive.
Blevins disagrees.
“Many residents in this town can’t afford $4 a day to feed their family, yet our officials are going out and spending $4 for a glass of iced tea,” said Blevins, who has requested hundreds of documents from the city and compiled a spreadsheet detailing credit-card spending.
The list of expenses runs from August 2007 to September 2010. While Blevins is still gathering receipts, the charges range from $3.06 at the United States Postal Service to a $3,884 charge at the Hilton Garden Inn in Macon
Other charges:
- $142 to a funeral home in Ozark, Ala., for a funeral spray from the city of East Point for a person identified as Wanda Williams.
- $139 to Edible Arrangements for the city's legal department.
- $2,930 in charges to the Comfort Inn and Suites on Camp Creek Parkway.
Blevins says the city also racked up nearly $2,000 in late-payment, over-limit and returned-check charges.
Jones said that, shortly after he started his position in 2007, he took up all the city’s credit cards to try to get expenses under control. In April, the city reissued cards to department heads only.
While not commenting on some of the individual expenses, Jones did say the Comfort Inn charges were due to the city not having a finance officer in place. During the interim, an interim finance person would come to East Point and spend the night at the Comfort Inn.
Many of the charges submitted in the last three years were missing receipts and a rationale for the expense. Jones insisted the recently implemented credit card policy offered a system of checks and balances that would make sure that credit card abuse would not occur under his watch.
“More than 20 percent of the city’s population is below the poverty line, and they just can’t take this type of spending," she said.
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