Your tax dollars at work!The February 14th issue of Miami Today reports on a county audit of "Art in Public Spaces." Even the County Commissioner who called for the audit is appalled at the report and rightly so. Commissioner Sally Heyman said of the questionable practices found by the audit:
“...(it) amounts to negligence to the point of being criminal.”
Much of the very expensive 630 piece collection, paid for with our hard earned tax dollars and estimated to be worth about $28 million, are damaged from neglect even though the program had $3.6 million in its bank account last year. The audit said:
“It is ill-advised to procure expensive artwork without consideration of long-term maintenance costs.”
Who dropped the ball on what the auditor called a "program in shambles"? The program is overseen by a 15 member board of trustees and the commission retained final oversight. The audit says that these trustees have not done their job. In addition, there is an 11 member advisory committee and they get paid $500 a day plus expenses when their services are used.
I think County Manager Burgess And Michael Spring have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do but I think they will weasel out of this mess with a slap on the wrist. Also, here are the trust members (I bet each is on multiple boards and most offer little more than their names, as usual, to County Boards):
Cindi Nash, Chairperson
Susan Ackley
Felice Dubin
Vera Dubson
Sandi-Jo Gordon
Julio Grabiel
Cheryl Jacobs
Penny Lambeth
Dr. Paula Levine
Becky Roper Matkov
Graciela N. Solares
Carol Damian
6 comments:
what do you expect from a board with only women, chaos. They need a man to serve as a compass.
IM JOKING, IN JOKING!
This is very sad. The county has some nice artwork...
The steel art sculpture outside the South Dade Government Center was moved while they fixed up the building. It was then replaced. It ended up with plaster splatters, scratches in the chrome finish, a dent, and a sloppy paint job that resulted in blue enamel paint dripped on the finish. It is really sad it was abused. If the artist saw, I imagine he/she would be mortified by the damage.
What is wrong with this county? We have all ego and no personal pride?
This isn't Spring's fault. The guy was only put in charge of this program a few months ago after Vivian Rodriguez-Odonell (former Art in Public Places Director) was fired and her husband Ivan (the most recent director of the Art in Public Places Program) resigned.
Of course the audit found bad things. That's why the audit was ordered, because people suspected the program was in shambles.
You don't order an audit of a department if you think everything is going hunky dory,
You can't fix the problem if you don't know the extent of the problem, and an audit is designed to guage the extent of any problem.
I would anticipate the Mayor will order a lot more audits of a lot more departments. And guess what? some are going to come back bad.
But then you know what needs to be fixed.
moderate
Julio is a woman? I don't think so. I recognize some of these names...they are on numerous boards. They should just say NO and give others a chance...or better yet, do away with boards.
Not a moderate...I've missed you.
I hope they arrest the Directors and Board members who permitted the taxpayer money and the artists work to be stolen and damaged. Please arrest these bums.
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