Garbage company overbilled Walton County by nearly $600,000 (DOCUMENT)
Comments 7 | Recommend 1
April 17, 2010 4:54 PM
Tom McLaughlin
Daily News
Garbage issues are piling up in Walton County.
Finance officers, attorneys and the Sheriff’s Office are reviewing service provided by Dayco Disposal, a private company responsible for collecting garbage in the north end of the county since March 2006.
Audits also have been ordered for Waste Management, which collects garbage in the south end of Walton County, and the city of DeFuniak Springs, which collects its own solid waste.
In the south end, angry condominium owners and the Walton County Taxpayer’s Association are threatening legal action over garbage collection.
Suzanne Harris, president of the Edgewater Beach Condominium owners association in Miramar Beach, said she plans to sue if the county doesn’t do something to rectify billing discrepancies she says have been occurring for years.
At the moment, Dayco Disposal finds itself under the most intense scrutiny.
That follows an auditor‘s findings that the company overbilled Walton County by $587,397 between March 2006 and January of this year.
Information compiled by county Finance Director Bill Imfeld and turned over to the county attorney has recently been shared with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, said Sheriff Mike Adkinson.
“There are clearly some issues here,” Adkinson said.
Adkinson said he had assembled a team of investigators to delve into the Dayco matter.
“We’re doing background and follow-up to see what the issues are and to what level they rise to,” Adkinson said.
Dayco Disposal, is owned by the Day family and is based in Freeport. It has had a contract to pick up garbage in north Walton County since March of 2006.
Under its original contract, the company charged the county $7.70 per household per month. In 2009 the contract was amended and Dayco was paid $10.34 per household per month.
Dayco’s contract with the county called for businesses to negotiate their own pickup rates with Dayco, according to Shirl Williams, Walton County’s assistant administrator.
Questions about Dayco’s billing practices first arose in the spring of 2009.
At that time, then-County Administrator Ronnie Bell ordered Imfeld and current County Administrator Lyle Siegler to “verify the residential units that each of the franchise haulers is billing us for.”
In January 2010, Imfeld reported the discovery of “2,258 discrepancies” in Dayco’s bills to the county.
The discrepancies included 500 on the commercial side of the ledger, Imfeld said last week.
The rest involved residential properties, including bills to the county for “1,390 addresses for which no residence could be located,” according to a memo Imfeld compiled.
Imfeld said some of the empty lots the county was being billed for were in Holmes County and others were in Alabama.
Dayco even charged the county a residential fee for County Commissioner Cecilia Jones’ office in South Walton County, Imfeld said.
Dayco General Manager Bud Day (no relation to the Medal of Honor recipient) referred comments from the company to its attorney, Steve Willis.
Willis did not return a phone call.
However, Dayco’s owners have spoken to county officials. In a letter to Imfeld dated Feb. 25, Dayco’s Roy Day termed the $587,000 overbilling “a catastrophic breakdown within our system of checking and confirming households in our service area.”
LeRoy Day is listed as company’s owner and LeRoy Day Jr. as its president.
Roy Day offered in his letter to have Dayco repay the county at a rate of $5,000 per month. The money would be deducted from Dayco’s monthly household invoice, the letter said.
Imfeld said the county has not responded to Day’s offer.
Imfeld also reported in a memo to the county that he had questioned Bud Day about billing Dayco had done “for a series of streets listed in Freeport (where) there had never been any streets.”
“I opined that someone must have made a conscientious decision to bill the county for non-existent homes,” Imfeld said in the memo. “He advised that his brother-in-law, Erik Graves, was responsible for all of the billing errors.”
During his discussions with the Dayco owners, Imfeld was told that county officials had informed them that any commercial establishment that “generated less than six trash cans of waste per week” could be billed to the county as a residence.
Day said he received permission to bill the county for the smaller businesses from Williams, the assistant county administrator, and Russ Barry, the former head of the county’s public works department.
Imfeld reported to his bosses that Williams and Barry had denied giving such permission and that he’d found nothing in writing substantiating Day’s claim.
But in a letter that came with Dayco’s March bill, Ro Cuchens, a county commissioner at the time the Dayco contract was negotiated, took Dayco’s side in the billing argument.
“The Board (of commissioners) made the decision to include the small businesses of Walton County as residential customers,” Cuchens’ letter asserts.
“This decision was made in order to reduce the financial burden on our small businesses,” the letter said.
When the accounting firm of Carr, Riggs and Ingram reported Dayco’s overbilling in an audit report released at the beginning of April, it was critical of what it termed “a lack of sufficient internal control over monitoring contract compliance of its vendors.”
The accounting firm said such lack of control could “prohibit the county from detecting similar excess billing.”
In response, the county has called for audits from its other garbage collectors.
Waste Management, which collects residential and commercial garbage in the south end of Walton County, is conducting its own audit of residential and commercial routes, said Dan McGinnis, a spokesman for the company.
“We’re doing it because the county has asked us to provide them with current route sheets, things like that,” McGinnis said.
He called the audit “an arduous, tedious process” and said it probably wouldn’t be completed before the end of May.
McGinnis said a customer count is being conducted based on a list of single-family dwellings provided by the Walton County property appraiser’s office.
Like Dayco, Waste Management bills by the customer. It presently serves about 14,000 in South Walton.
“Our initial records indicate we are providing service to more single-family houses than we are being compensated for by the county,” McGinnis said.
County Commissioner Larry Jones works for Waste Management.
The county could find itself in court over a decision years ago to treat condominiums as commercial properties where garbage collection is concerned.
Condominium owners have always paid the same property taxes as residential homeowners, and their properties have been listed as residential on tax records, said Robert Shelton, a property manager at two condominiums complexes.
Residential trash pickup is free under the county’s contract with Waste Management, Harris said. But her unit alone is being billed somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 a year because of the commercial listing.
“They can’t have it both ways,” she said.
Shelton said he raised objections to the commercial status as far back as 2004, but nothing ever came of his efforts.
Harris, who recently defeated the county in court on a public records issue, said she’s ready to take on the County Commissioners again.
“We’ve given them an ultimatum,” she said. “We’ve given them a week to figure out what to do.”
Comments 7 | Recommend 1
April 17, 2010 4:54 PM
Tom McLaughlin
Daily News
Garbage issues are piling up in Walton County.
Finance officers, attorneys and the Sheriff’s Office are reviewing service provided by Dayco Disposal, a private company responsible for collecting garbage in the north end of the county since March 2006.
Audits also have been ordered for Waste Management, which collects garbage in the south end of Walton County, and the city of DeFuniak Springs, which collects its own solid waste.
In the south end, angry condominium owners and the Walton County Taxpayer’s Association are threatening legal action over garbage collection.
Suzanne Harris, president of the Edgewater Beach Condominium owners association in Miramar Beach, said she plans to sue if the county doesn’t do something to rectify billing discrepancies she says have been occurring for years.
At the moment, Dayco Disposal finds itself under the most intense scrutiny.
That follows an auditor‘s findings that the company overbilled Walton County by $587,397 between March 2006 and January of this year.
Information compiled by county Finance Director Bill Imfeld and turned over to the county attorney has recently been shared with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, said Sheriff Mike Adkinson.
“There are clearly some issues here,” Adkinson said.
Adkinson said he had assembled a team of investigators to delve into the Dayco matter.
“We’re doing background and follow-up to see what the issues are and to what level they rise to,” Adkinson said.
Dayco Disposal, is owned by the Day family and is based in Freeport. It has had a contract to pick up garbage in north Walton County since March of 2006.
Under its original contract, the company charged the county $7.70 per household per month. In 2009 the contract was amended and Dayco was paid $10.34 per household per month.
Dayco’s contract with the county called for businesses to negotiate their own pickup rates with Dayco, according to Shirl Williams, Walton County’s assistant administrator.
Questions about Dayco’s billing practices first arose in the spring of 2009.
At that time, then-County Administrator Ronnie Bell ordered Imfeld and current County Administrator Lyle Siegler to “verify the residential units that each of the franchise haulers is billing us for.”
In January 2010, Imfeld reported the discovery of “2,258 discrepancies” in Dayco’s bills to the county.
The discrepancies included 500 on the commercial side of the ledger, Imfeld said last week.
The rest involved residential properties, including bills to the county for “1,390 addresses for which no residence could be located,” according to a memo Imfeld compiled.
Imfeld said some of the empty lots the county was being billed for were in Holmes County and others were in Alabama.
Dayco even charged the county a residential fee for County Commissioner Cecilia Jones’ office in South Walton County, Imfeld said.
Dayco General Manager Bud Day (no relation to the Medal of Honor recipient) referred comments from the company to its attorney, Steve Willis.
Willis did not return a phone call.
However, Dayco’s owners have spoken to county officials. In a letter to Imfeld dated Feb. 25, Dayco’s Roy Day termed the $587,000 overbilling “a catastrophic breakdown within our system of checking and confirming households in our service area.”
LeRoy Day is listed as company’s owner and LeRoy Day Jr. as its president.
Roy Day offered in his letter to have Dayco repay the county at a rate of $5,000 per month. The money would be deducted from Dayco’s monthly household invoice, the letter said.
Imfeld said the county has not responded to Day’s offer.
Imfeld also reported in a memo to the county that he had questioned Bud Day about billing Dayco had done “for a series of streets listed in Freeport (where) there had never been any streets.”
“I opined that someone must have made a conscientious decision to bill the county for non-existent homes,” Imfeld said in the memo. “He advised that his brother-in-law, Erik Graves, was responsible for all of the billing errors.”
During his discussions with the Dayco owners, Imfeld was told that county officials had informed them that any commercial establishment that “generated less than six trash cans of waste per week” could be billed to the county as a residence.
Day said he received permission to bill the county for the smaller businesses from Williams, the assistant county administrator, and Russ Barry, the former head of the county’s public works department.
Imfeld reported to his bosses that Williams and Barry had denied giving such permission and that he’d found nothing in writing substantiating Day’s claim.
But in a letter that came with Dayco’s March bill, Ro Cuchens, a county commissioner at the time the Dayco contract was negotiated, took Dayco’s side in the billing argument.
“The Board (of commissioners) made the decision to include the small businesses of Walton County as residential customers,” Cuchens’ letter asserts.
“This decision was made in order to reduce the financial burden on our small businesses,” the letter said.
When the accounting firm of Carr, Riggs and Ingram reported Dayco’s overbilling in an audit report released at the beginning of April, it was critical of what it termed “a lack of sufficient internal control over monitoring contract compliance of its vendors.”
The accounting firm said such lack of control could “prohibit the county from detecting similar excess billing.”
In response, the county has called for audits from its other garbage collectors.
Waste Management, which collects residential and commercial garbage in the south end of Walton County, is conducting its own audit of residential and commercial routes, said Dan McGinnis, a spokesman for the company.
“We’re doing it because the county has asked us to provide them with current route sheets, things like that,” McGinnis said.
He called the audit “an arduous, tedious process” and said it probably wouldn’t be completed before the end of May.
McGinnis said a customer count is being conducted based on a list of single-family dwellings provided by the Walton County property appraiser’s office.
Like Dayco, Waste Management bills by the customer. It presently serves about 14,000 in South Walton.
“Our initial records indicate we are providing service to more single-family houses than we are being compensated for by the county,” McGinnis said.
County Commissioner Larry Jones works for Waste Management.
The county could find itself in court over a decision years ago to treat condominiums as commercial properties where garbage collection is concerned.
Condominium owners have always paid the same property taxes as residential homeowners, and their properties have been listed as residential on tax records, said Robert Shelton, a property manager at two condominiums complexes.
Residential trash pickup is free under the county’s contract with Waste Management, Harris said. But her unit alone is being billed somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 a year because of the commercial listing.
“They can’t have it both ways,” she said.
Shelton said he raised objections to the commercial status as far back as 2004, but nothing ever came of his efforts.
Harris, who recently defeated the county in court on a public records issue, said she’s ready to take on the County Commissioners again.
“We’ve given them an ultimatum,” she said. “We’ve given them a week to figure out what to do.”
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