North Central Solid Waste Authority Manager Joseph Lewandowski is under fire from Española Mayor Joseph Maestas and has announced plans to quit this summer in the midst of a “financial crisis.”
Maestas questioned Lewandowski’s management at a board of directors meeting Jan. 22, grilling him about finances, unpaid payroll taxes and missing audits.
“I can’t tell how much money is coming in or going out,” Maestas said. “We haven’t filed a single independent audit with the state auditor’s office in four years.”
Maestas suggested that the Authority should hire somebody to oversee Lewandowski’s work, questioning Lewandowski’s truck maintenance budgets and his handling of a $350,000 federal grant when Lewandowski first took the helm in 2004.
Lewandowski interrupted Maestas to give notice that he does not plan to renew his manager’s contract when it runs out in August. He was quick to add that his quitting was unrelated to criticism from Maestas. But Lewandowski also said the Authority is in a “financial crisis.”
The Authority has $1.3 million in outstanding debt as of Dec. 31, 2008, but the current fiscal year budget is balanced, according to documents Lewandowski showed board members.
A key source of Authority funding was supposed to be a federal grant obtained by the County. Lewandowski spent the $350,000 grant before learning the grant had been lost in 2004. County officials had never completed paperwork accepting the federal money, he said.
That unleashed a “domino effect,” Lewandowski said.
“There’s little (fiscal) flexibility in this business,” Lewandowski said. “We operate lean. The (missing) grant put us in the hole. It took until early 2007 to get out of the hole. Then we lost five truck engines and had to use pickups.”
Using pickups slowed garbage collection, which in turn caused a spike in overtime pay, ballooning payroll by $718,569 over the $1.85 million Authority personnel budget for fiscal year 2007-2008, according to Authority documents. The Authority has yet to pay state and federal payroll taxes as a result, Lewandowski said. The Authority owes $370,844 in back state and federal payroll taxes, according to Authority documents.
Other board directors were inclined to side with Lewandowski at the meeting despite the Authority’s financial problems.
“I am worried about it, but I know (Lewandowski) is not taking money home with him,” Assistant County Manager Tomas Campos said. He just got behind because of $5 a gallon diesel.”
The Authority lacks the power to raise rates on customers, a political hot potato that falls instead to city and County officials. The County raised rates to $13.80 per month last year and rates will jump again to $15 a month in November, Campos said.
But according to a rate comparison compiled by Lewandowski, the real cost of garbage service for county residents — the amount the County would have to charge customers for the Authority to become self-sufficient — is $19.42 per household.
Campos said County commissioners are unlikely to approve additional rate increases any time soon, and that the County will therefore likely continue to pay the difference out of general funds. County subsidies have dropped significantly from the $1.6 million the first year he took the helm, Lewandowski said. Last year’s County subsidy was $480,000, he said.
Last year, Lewandowski had said the Authority had “done everything we possibly can” to collect from delinquent customers and that reducing County subsidies to the Authority would require either cutting services or raising rates. But at the Jan. 22 meeting, Lewandowski said he now sees collecting overdue bills, which amounted to about $2 million last year, from customers as the best way out of the crisis.
“This is our salvation,” he said, hoisting a stack of red folders containing liens filed with the County against the property of delinquent customers.
The Authority was created in 2002 by a joint powers agreement between Rio Arriba County, the city and the Ohkay Owingeh and Santa Clara pueblos. Lewandowski’s Alamogordo-based company Operational Consultants was hired in 2004 to manage the Authority.