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Highlands Today

County: Fill Dumped At Private Property Saved Money

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By JIM KONKOLY

Highlands Today

Published: November 6, 2008

SEBRING - The conflicting claims over Highlands County's longstanding past practice of dumping unneeded fill materials collected by the Road and Bridge department on private properties won't be settled until the end of this year or early 2009.

That's when the Highlands County Clerk of Court's office plans to conduct a detailed audit of the department, with a focus on hundreds of truck loads of unneeded fill material dumped on the Farm Road property of Charles Howerton in late September and early Oct. 2007.

A report by the Compliance and Internal Audit Division of the clerk's office, given to Clerk of Courts L.E. "Luke" Brooker on Oct. 26, 2007, raised questions about the possible misuse of $113,000 in county personnel, equipment and materials in that operation.

Kyle Green, interim superintendent of Road and Bridge, said there was no misuse of county resources, the dumping in question saved taxpayer dollars, and that it complied with the county's policy in place at the time.

Two things are for sure.

First, the county's practice of dumping unneeded fill material on private properties was widespread and goes back decades.

Hundreds of property owners were given free fill material not needed by Road and Bridge over the years, under a standard county policy, said Bruce Van Jaarsveld, who retired April 1 after 32 years with Road and Bridge, the last 10 as superintendent.

"The audit would be great," Van Jaarsveld said. "If I were still working at Road and Bridge I would welcome it, because we were doing exactly what the policy was as long as I was there."

And second, this issue won't raise questions in the future, as the policy was discontinued earlier this year.

Except for clean fill dirt, which the county keeps, all fill materials dug up by Road and Bridge are being taken to the county landfill and used mainly to cover refuse, according to Green and Ken Wheeler, director of solid waste. Wheeler said chunks of concrete and asphalt in the fill material are sorted out and will be used by the county's asphalt plant.

While giving fill materials to property owners was allowed, covering the cost of transporting it to the properties may not have been, according to a Florida attorney general's advisory legal opinion issued on March 19, 1982.

Jim Smith, then the state attorney general, wrote: "If the county determines that the dirt removed from drainage ditches and other county lands or projects has no commercial value, it could be offered to the public provided county funds are not expended in disposing of or transferring the dirt, which would primarily benefit individual members of the public rather than the public in general."

The clerk's compliance and internal audit report, which did not seek explanations from Road and Bridge, estimated that 977 truck loads of fill material were taken by Road and Bridge from its Sebring storage yard to Howerton's property in the two-week period from Sept. 24 to Oct 5, 2007. The number is an estimate based on daily spot checks of truck activity and mileage and fuel records.

Green said he checked daily work sheets and found that about 460 truck loads of fill materials that Road and Bridge couldn't use were taken to the Howerton property during six work days.

Besides the amount of material hauled to the property, Green's review differs sharply with the clerk's report about the value of the material and the use of county workers.

Based on prices from four companies, the clerk's report said fill material was selling for $105 per truck load. Multiplying that price by the estimated 977 truck loads, the report listed an estimated benefit to the property owner of $102,585.

Tasha Morgan, an internal auditor who worked on the report, said the estimate was "based on the cheapest dirt they sold. All they sell is clean fill."

Green said the fill taken to the Howerton property was not clean fill dirt and that the value, if any, would be "nowhere near that amount."

"The material that was given away was material that we could not have used for anything at all," he said. "We had a bunch of material stockpiled, old ditch sweeping materials, just spoil, unusable spoil, and nobody would have bid on it to remove it from there.

"I do know that the material we hauled to that site, we could not have used it for anything at Road and Bridge," Green added.

The clerk's report described the material as "composed of sand or sand/shell mixture and a sand, concrete and asphalt mixture."

Based on the county's "break even" accounting, which sets the budgeting charge for Road and Bridge work for other county departments, the total cost for six dump trucks, a loader and a backhoe used in taking fill to the Howerton property was estimated at $21,433 in the clerk's report.

Today, Green said, all of the fill in question would be taken to the county landfill under the new policy. Back in late 2007, all of the manpower and equipment used to take the fill to the private property would have been used to dispose of it elsewhere, he said.

"If we would have had to haul that dirt, say, to the landfill, we would have used our trucks and equipment and it would have actually cost more than to haul it out to where we did," he said.

Green said he was not involved in that project, but is certain that "the choices made by the people who made those choices saved the taxpayers." The unneeded fill was hauled about seven or eight miles to the Howerton property, he said, instead of a 20-mile trip to the landfill.

Green said that in early August, shortly after he was promoted to interim superintendent, county Administrator Mike Wright set the practice that no fill material disposed of by Road and Bridge will be dumped on private property, and it all goes to the landfill.

Wheeler said that practice was in place since at least early May, when Road and Bridge began regularly bringing unneeded fill to the landfill.

Wheeler said he can't recall the date, but within the last year he read in a professional journal about a state attorney general's opinion that fill collected by a local government cannot be declared surplus property unless the county has no need of it.

Because fill can always be used at the landfill, he said, then-county Administrator Carl Cool changed the policy of unneeded county fill being given to the nearest landowner willing to accept it.

"Carl (Cool) said we can always use that material for cover for the landfill, and his decision was to comply with this ruling and it was the logical thing to do," Wheeler said.

Cool said about his decision, "It was not really a ruling, it was a consensus from Bruce (Van Jaarsveld) and Ken (Wheeler) and I that it would be better if that material would be taken to the landfill and used as cover material."

Green said in some cases fill dug up is taken directly from a work site to the landfill, and in some cases it is stockpiled at Road Bridge storage yards for later transportation to the landfill.

There are two exceptions, Green said. If Road and Bridge digs fill material in a special use taxing district, that district can choose to keep the material, he said.

"And," he said, "we do keep some of the fill if it's real, real clean fill dirt, to fill in over culverts so that we don't have to buy that much."

Jim Konkoly can be reached at 863-386-5855 or e-mail jkonkoly@highlandstoday.com

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