Norris audit finds ‘material errors’
Problems associated with Water Commission
Auditor Travis Lowe gives a report on the 2022 Norris city financial audit to the City Council on Monday night. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
The other errors included the overspending of the budget for solid waste, and some procedural issues with bank account reconciliations. The audit also was late, which auditor Travis Lowe attributed to staff turnover at the city offices last year, which included finding a new city manager.
One of the Water Commission problems listed in the audit report presented to the City Council on Monday night concerned a “Water Quality Control Act violation” that resulted in the city being fined by the state of Tennessee last year over the dumping of contaminated sewage into nearby Buffalo Creek from the city’s sewage-treatment plant.
Lowe, representing Pugh CPAs, noted that the sewage problem is being addressed by a multi-year action plan approved by the state, but will remain an issue on the city’s audit reports for the next few years until the problems are fixed.
Norris expects to spend up to $7 million to remedy the sewage issues, which were outlined by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation in a “director’s order” to the mayor last February, which found the city in violation of water-quality regulations concerning discharges from the sewage-treatment plant on East Norris Road near Andersonville Highway.
The second “material error” associated with the Water Commission, Lowe said, was a long-term violation of the city’s own “leave policy,” in which the commissioners allowed water Superintendent Tony Wilkerson to bank vacation and comp time, which he now expects the city to pay him for.
“Leave policy needs to be followed,” Lowe told the City Council.
He noted that “management allowed a practice to develop” contrary to city personnel policy.
Under that “practice,” the city now faces a payout to Wilkerson of nearly $30,000 from water and sewer funds to cover his banked 575 hours of vacation time and 166.5 hours of “comp time.”
The Water Commission voted during a meeting on Thursday (Feb. 9) to send a request to the City Council that Wilkerson be paid the money over either four years at $5,700 a year, or five years at $4,500 a year.
Water commissioners also discussed renegotiating Wilkerson’s base pay to give him a raise so he would not be entitled to compensatory time off for working more than 40 hours a week.
The city is working on an updated personnel policy, which will be the subject of a City Council public hearing at 6:30 p.m. March 13.
That policy reportedly will close loopholes or clear up ambiguous language in the current policy that may have led the Water Commission to allow Wilkerson to bank his vacation and comp time.
Councilwoman Loretta Painter, who in December was appointed to the Water Commission as the City Council’s official representative, has been calling for a resolution to Wilkerson’s leave issue since last June, when it came up in meetings on the city’s 2022-23 fiscal year budget.
Water Commission Chairman Richard Dyer commented in a July 26, 2019, memo titled “Backup systems for Norris Water Processing Plant: Options and opinions,” that violations of personnel policy in favor of water and sewer system employees might be justified.
“If our rules prevent doing what is needed, we must change the rules – or ignore them,” Dyer wrote. “Expecting good people to remain loyal to us while we refuse to compensate them for a job awesomely done is foolish.”
Mayor Chris Mitchell has said he is in favor of paying Wilkerson for the banked leave and comp time “because it had been officially recorded as a liability on the city’s accounting books” by the auditors.
The mayor said he wants to move forward with a revised personnel policy that would prevent such an issue from developing again.