The Blade
TOLEDO, Ohio — The city should have better control over money earmarked to buy Toledoans smoke detectors, the city’s law director said in a report on the fund.
“Better purchasing controls should be in place; some expenditures from the fund stretch permissible uses to the limit, [and] alarm fines should more properly be placed in the general fund as they are not definitionally not trust funds,” Adam Loukx wrote in a report ordered by Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson.
The Blade reported late last year that Toledo Fire Chief Luis Santiago and at least one other high-ranking fire official used smoke-detector trust fund to pay for hotel rooms, conference costs, and dinners.
Soon afterward, Toledo City Council approved legislation that changes how that money can be spent after some members learned that the fund was used to pay for things other than smoke detectors — years before those kinds of expenditures were permissible.
The fund was created in 2002 with private donations and a fire department program fee.
Use of the fund was limited to paying for smoke detectors, other alarm systems, residential sprinklers, and public education material.
However, on Aug. 12, 2014, council altered the fund rules, allowing the fire department to use that money for “accreditation expenditures” and “officer and professional management education.”
Receipts and city expense forms obtained by The Blade showed that the fund was being used for dinners and travel before council approved that change.
Mr. Loukx said the fund was initially used “strictly for stated purposes.”
But he found that “in or around 2010,” the fund began to increase from an influx of money and it then started to be tapped for other purposes.
“The fund began, for instance, to pay for travel and continuing education expenses that had previously been borne by the general fund,” he wrote.
Mr. Loukx said the change coincided with a push for city departments to spend less from the general fund, which at that time would have been $48 million out-of-balance without measures put in place by the Bell administration.
Mr. Loukx referenced a pricey dinner paid for with money from the fund.
A Dec. 15, 2013, restaurant receipt from the Final Cut at Hollywood Casino Toledo showed a $760.77 charge plus a $170 tip.
The dinner included high-ranking Toledo fire officials and members of the department’s accreditation team.
“The purpose of the dinner, from a business perspective, was not unusual or sinister,” Mr. Loukx wrote.
Mayor Hicks-Hudson said she would implement all of Mr. Loukx’s recommendations.
Toledo City Council next week could vote on an ordinance that would direct fine money collected from false alarm citations to the general fund rather than the smoke detector trust fund.
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