By Robert Eckhard and Halle Stockton
The Sarasota Herald Tribune
SOUTHERN MANATEE, Fla. — Bookkeeping mishaps at the Southern Manatee Fire Rescue district include the Thanksgiving when nobody got paid and past due payroll taxes that led to $3,000 in penalties from the Internal Revenue Service.
Taxpayers footed the bill to clean up those messes.
But the most recent gaffe is being paid for by the guy who made it.
Former Fire Chief Foster Gover, who resigned late last year under pressure, has paid back $1,600 to the district to cover the cost of a road trip to New York last summer.
Four people, including a commissioner on the fire district’s governing board, hauled a trailer from Florida to New York and back to bring a 3,500-pound steel beam from the World Trade Center to Bradenton for a 9/11 memorial.
All the costs were supposed to be paid for with donations.
Gover did not go on the trip, but he ordered staff at the fire district to pay the travel expenses.
The idea was for the fire district to be reimbursed as donations rolled in, said former Fire Commissioner Brad Ranney, who went on the trip with his son and two other people.
“There were no intentions of any public funds being used whatsoever,” Ranney said.
The donations did not come, though, and nobody noticed that the $1,600 had not been paid back until six months later, when reporters from the Herald-Tribune requested copies of receipts from the trip.
Attorneys for the district blamed Gover, saying the fire district’s money should have never been used for the trip.
After being chief for less than a year, Gover resigned in December amid an investigation into misconduct.
Gover, who received a $250,000 severance package, did not return a phone call for comment.
The $1,600 that Gover paid back amounts to about 20 percent of the $8,000 budget for the memorial, which will be placed outside the district’s headquarters.
Like the donations, work on the memorial is behind schedule. It was supposed to be dedicated last October, but that date was pushed back and the sculpture is not yet complete, Ranney said.
He and his son, who owns a welding shop, are still working on it. The goal is to have the sculpture done by September, Ranney said.
Other bookkeeping errors at the district in the past few years include the 2009 Thanskgiving when the district’s 80 employees were paid several days late. The district agreed to pay any bank fines that employees incurred because of bounced checks.
The IRS fines were levied in 2009 and 2010 over payroll taxes.
Assistant Chief J.R. Thayer said the payroll problem has been resolved.
“It was an error and it was corrected and it’s not going to happen anymore,” he said.
The fire district has an annual budget of about $11 million and serves a 34-square mile area that includes Oneco, Tallevast, Palm Aire and University Park.
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