Friday, January 08, 1999
City investigating bills from contractor
BY LISA DONOVAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
City of Cincinnati investigators are concerned taxpayer dollars may have been spent on asphalt that never landed in a pothole.
Allegations have surfaced that a private contractor billed the city for paving materials never used for city road projects, the Office of Municipal Investigations (OMI), the city's investigativearm, reported.
The city is expected to refer the case to the Hamilton County prosecutor's office.
City Engineer Jay Gala alerted city investigators to possible problems with Newtown-based Barrett Paving Materials Inc., which billed the city for asphalt that was never used, according to a city document.
“He (Mr. Gala) was told the foreman for the Barrett Company had ordered drivers hauling asphalt intended for city streets to dump certain loads at private companies and on residential lots,” the city docu ment states.
That foreman is 18-year Barrett Paving employee David Gadberry. Neither Mr. Gadberry nor company officials returned phone calls.
How long this may have been going on and how much money the city may have lost was unclear on Thursday.
“This (investigation) suggests it was a lot more extensive than just the incidents identified in the investigation,” said City Manager John Shirey.
The city's annual $8 million to $10 million street rehabilitation program includes an estimated $250,000 in contracts for the kind of pothole and “partial-depth street repairs” Barrett was working on. Barrett receives an estimated $100,000 to $200,000 in contract work for these projects.
On several occasions in May, an OMI investigator monitored trucks hauling asphalt from Barrett Paving's Hamilton Avenue plant to a city project at North Bend Road.
Several trucks went to the Bevis Towing dump, and on one occasion the investigator followed the driver into the Colerain Avenue site and started asking questions. The driver, a subcontractor on the project, said he was instructed to take a portion of the load to the North Bend site and the remaining asphalt to the dump.
Mr. Gadberry later told investigators the discarded asphalt was “gummy, possibly not mixed properly, and contained too much AC (asphalt-concrete),” city documents state.
But a city inspector found eight to 10 tons had been dumped and that it “appeared to be useable.”
Mr. Shirey repeatedly said it did not appear the company was at fault, and other city officials praised Barrett Paving for its service to the city.
The investigation gave city officials a chance to review how job sites are monitored and whether that needs to be beefed up. Mr. Shirey said an inspector saw something was amiss in this case and launched the investigation.
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