ST. LOUIS — Contractors aren’t getting paid on time. The police department is short patrol cars. And trash pickup is still a mess.
Three days into their review of the city budget, aldermen are already digging into problems at City Hall.
The city’s chief financial officer has revealed issues with a new accounting system — and blasted the consultant she said set it up. Police department officials say officers, in some cases, are having to ride three to a car. And the city’s trash commissioner said some pickup is still taking weeks longer than it should.
Budget hearings, which will run for several weeks, give aldermen a rare opportunity to wade through the entire city government, line item by line item. They can call in department chiefs and hear first-hand about what’s happening in their shops. They can demand justification for any part of the $1.3 billion budget. And they can shed new light on the inner workings of a city in transition, flush with cash, and grappling with big problems.
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Hearings started Monday. Comptroller Darlene Green went first and offered a welcome bit of good news: Fitch Ratings recently upgraded the city’s debt, which could lower future borrowing costs.
But Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, of Old North ºüÀêÊÓƵ, hit a sore spot when he said he’d heard from city contractors saying they’ve sometimes waited months to get paid. Green told him that the introduction of a new accounting system, which began last year, has been a bit of a mess.
The city hired global consultancy Accenture to help with the transition, but Green said it hasn’t been very helpful: The part of the system handling city purchasing wasn’t configured properly, and city staff weren’t adequately trained to handle the shift, leading to confusion and delays. “(Accenture) promised they were the top-of-the-line people to make this work, and they have not,†Green said.
She said her office has had to hire accounting firms KPMG and Armanino to review Accenture’s work, which is how she learned of the configuration issues.
Green’s staff said they have been holding meetings and training sessions with various departments to iron out the issues.
“We see it coming along,†said deputy comptroller Beverly Fitzsimmons.
But Green told the Post-Dispatch she needed to talk to the city counselor’s office, too. The city has spent millions of dollars on Accenture’s services and hasn’t gotten much bang for its buck, she said.
Accenture, in a statement, said it was proud to “have successfully supported the transformation of the City’s enterprise resources planning system.â€
The police department presented after the comptroller. Chief Robert Tracy and his budget director, David Daniels, noted increases in the budget for pay raises designed to kick-start long-struggling recruitment efforts, and for take-home vehicles meant to retain experienced officers and make the department more visible in the neighborhoods.
But aldermen also got some sobering statistics: There are currently about 980 commissioned officers, or about three-quarters of the force 10 years ago.
Daniels said the department is also dealing with a shortage of vehicles: Even with reduced staff, there aren’t enough cars, and the ones they have sometimes aren’t repaired quickly enough.
“We’ve had situations in the last year where we put three men to a car,†he said. “It’s very frustrating.â€
On Wednesday, Deputy Refuse Commissioner Randy Breitenfeld updated aldermen on trash and recycling pickup, which has epitomized the city’s struggles with staffing and basic services over the past year. For months, there haven’t been enough drivers to pick up the trash on time, and most of the recycling has been too contaminated to go anywhere but the landfill.
And overall waste disposal costs are expected to jump by $3.6 million, or 45%, in the new fiscal year.
The department has more drivers now, Breitenfeld said, but they’re still struggling to empty alley dumpsters twice a week like they’re supposed to.
That’s part of why only about 40% of recycling is being accepted by the city’s processing contractor, he said.
“When those dumpsters don’t get picked up twice a week,†he said, “people throw everything in the green and blue dumpsters.â€
And bulk pickup — of furniture, appliances and the like — remains a mess. Breitenfeld said he used to have six crews for the north side, six crews for the south side, and two other crews in reserve. Now he has two crews working north, and two working south. What they used to be able to get done in a week now takes six.Â
But Breitenfeld said there may yet be some light at the end of the tunnel. He said he’s seeing more job candidates in the wake of recent pay raises, and heard from some former employees interested in coming back.
“I’m hoping within a year we can maybe get back close to covering all those routes on a daily basis,†he said.