The City Council Monday night voted on regulations to better
track and perhaps curtail employee credit card spending by
restricting the number of city-issued cards it gives out and
ordering department heads to be more stringent on purchase
approvals.
Hollister – The City Council Monday night voted on regulations to better track and perhaps curtail employee credit card spending by restricting the number of city-issued cards it gives out and ordering department heads to be more stringent on purchase approvals.
With the city’s tightening budget and the arrival of new Finance Director Robert Galvan a few months ago, council members had raised questions about the current procedure for the use of Calcards, credit cards distributed to nearly every city employee through a state-run bank for governmental agencies. Calcards are used similarly to petty cash, and according to Galvan tend to be used to buy tools and equipment in the Public Works, Fire or Police Departments. Under Hollister’s existing system, most of the city’s 139 employees have their own Calcards and are required to get their department head’s approval before making any purchases.
But after Monday’s council consensus, only department heads will receive Calcards, which employees will have to check out, and these department heads will have to be more “fiscally prudent” with their approvals than they have been in the past.
“We’re just watching out for the money, and I think that’s part of our responsibility. We’re just trying to tighten the reins up so there’s a go-to person every time,” Councilman Brad Pike said Thursday. “I want every penny accounted for so when it comes time to tell people ‘You know we’d like to keep your job, but we don’t know where all our money’s at,’ I want everyone to know where our money is. If there’s one word for me, it’s accountability.”
Police Chief Jeff Miller said Thursday he thinks the new system will work well for the Police Department, which has been using a similar approach for the past few years. Although each officer technically has a Calcard in his or her name, he said, he and the captains are the only ones who really have easy access to their cards. The rest are locked up.
“It’s been working fine for us. We’ve always had a system of monitoring them, so I don’t think it’s (the new system) going have a huge effect on us the way we’re operating right now,” Miller said.
Although City Clerk Geri Johnson said she and other non-department head employees would cope with the inconvenience of having to check the Calcards out, she didn’t see a problem with every employee having their own card.
“(Giving each employee a Calcard) has been a wonderful benefit. What I have seen is that it makes the employees more credible because we have an account for every receipt, and the employees have been very responsible,” she said. “From past experience, when we had one city credit card that we had to check out, I can’t tell you how embarrassing it was when the credit card was maxed-out. It’s not easy to keep track of, obviously. So once we got the Calcards and every employee had a Calcard, it was a lot simpler. And it was a time-saver.”
While council members such as Pike and Robert Scattini and Mayor Pauline Valdivia said they haven’t seen any glaring improprieties on the warrant registers Galvan presents the council with every week, “It’s easy to want to use it (a Calcard),” Valdivia said during the council’s meeting Monday.
“There’s no reason that someone can’t ask for a purchase request, get it approved, do what you need to do. It’s just an easier accounting thing, because we can alleviate the problem where somebody thought they bought something but they can’t find the receipt, things of that nature,” Pike said. “I don’t think it’s anything people won’t be able to live with.”
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
