NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- What was supposed to be a quiet private sendoff for retired City Commissioner Jim Hathaway at Mayor Adam Barringer's wine-bar restaurant has turned into a public relations nightmare for city hall with receipts obtained by Headline Surfer showing even more taxpayer money has been spent than previously acknowledged.
Two receipts from the city's credit card show not only $1,410 paid up front apparently for 47 meals at Barringer's beachside SoNapa Grille, but an additional $120 spent the night of the party for even more food , for a grand total of $1,530 for a party more than two weeks ago that Hathaway told his colleagues and City Manager Pam Brangaccio in advance that he didn't even want.
Headline Surfer has yet to receive documentation showing that any of the attendees have reimbursed the city for even a single meal. An earlier party was held at the Babe James Center for retiring Commissioner Lynne Plaskett, but it was approved by the commission and the public was invited.
Between 100 and 150 people, including a dozen or more city officials attended that sendoff. The use of a public credit card to pay for a private party for a retired city official where the general public and media were excluded and held at the mayor's private restaurant could be grounds for state ethics charges against the mayor, the city manager and the city attorney.
As of this mid-morning the city has failed to produce any invoices showing what was planned with the restaurant and the city never even got an itemized receipt showing what was ordered and whether alcohol was also paid for. Worse yet, the 22 city officials listed as invitees by the municipality make in excess of $1 million a year.
And while Brangaccio, who makes $125,000 a year told Headline Surfer in an e-mail Friday that she submitted a check for $60 for herself and her husband, the city did not provide copies of a single check from Brangaccio or anyone else, even though the city has the receipt showing Barringer's restaurant was paid in advance of the Hathaway sendoff.
Without an itemized receipt, there is no definitive way for the public to know with certainty whether the $30 per person the city manager says the restaurant was paid, included consumption of wine, beer or other alcoholic beverages.
Some city officials are listed as having to reimburse the city for their dinners, Brangaccio has said at least one municipal employee, her own executive secretary, Sandy Winkler, doesn't have to pay for her meal or that of her husband, which comes to $60.
Winkler makes more than $55,000 a year and is in the state's DROP program, putting her in line for a six-figure lump sum payment six months after she leaves her job in addition to a regular monthly public pension.
The lack of accounting, including itemized receipts, invoices and nothing to show the taxpayers have even been reimbursed including meals paid up front despite four no shows, has the city scrambling to fix what appears to be a fiasco with dollar amounts changing by the day and not getting any lower.
The party also calls into question whether the city manager, city attorney and mayor or any conbination thereof even considered the legal, ethical or potential conflicts of interests with Adam Barringer, the city's top elected official potentially profiting from the taxpayers. That concern has been raised by citizen watchdog Bob Tolley who challenged Barringer and company to come clean during last Tuesday's City Commission meeting.
Neither Brangaccio nor Barringer nor City Attorney Frank Gummey offered any answers when confronted by Tolley in front of a sparse crowd and media representation from Headline Surfer and the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
What disgusts Tolley more than the dinner itself being paid for up front for a select group of priviledged guests is the silence on the part of the mayor, the city manager and Gummey himself, an experienced attorney paid in excess of $200,000 a year.
"What are we paying this man for to have something like this happen when regular citizens in this community can't afford to eat at a nice restaurant," Tolley said.
Brangaccio has been asked repeatedly by Headline Surfer what plan the city had in place, if at all, to reimburse the taxpayers, but she hasn't provided any kind of explanation. Gummey, who has earned more than a million bucks himself since 2007, attended the party, along with his wife. Headline Surfer has sent him repeated e-mail messages for comment, with a return-receipt function showing he opened the Internet newspsaper's e-mails.
The city did provide invoices and receipts showing a $125 plaque and a $168 framed picture given to Hathaway, were paid with taxpayer money.
After learning taxpayer money was used through a public records request, Headline Surfer informed the mayor in writing that his "Mayor's Message" blog offered by the Internet newspaper was no longer available to him.
The private psrty comes amid the approval of Barringer and the commissioners to appoint Steve Sather for a vacancy on the Planning and Zoning Board, despite his no contest plea to purchasing cocaine from an undercover NSB cop.
Though adjudication of guilt was withheld after Sather completed community control and probation, thst part of his record remains public today. His drug past came to light when Sather came in last in a 2009 primary for the commission seat held by Jack Grasty.
Barringer and the commissioners have also come under fire for the mayor leading the way for his boyhood friend, Dave Fernandez to secure at least $20,000 in a CRA taxpayer-supported grant several weeks back to upgrade his Traders Pub bar on Flagler Avenue.
Fernandez has crossed paths with local law enforcement with at least have a dozen charges against him for bar fights, including a felony case that was dismissed recently after Fernandez initially agreed to enter a deferred prosecution agreement in the alleged beating of a patron who was covered in blood.
Headline Surfer has obtained 71 pages of public records from the state attorney's office on Fernandez and is in the process of determining the final outcome of the cases. Fernandez is presumed innocent unless or until a review of the public record shows otherwise.