A Times Editorial

Dunedin policy invites trouble

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 24, 2000

When public employees forget that they are doing the public's business with the public's money, they invariably get into trouble.

Perhaps that is what led to the problems in the Dunedin parks department.

Parks Director Edward Lovelace was fired Tuesday after being accused of taking $2,200 worth of city equipment to his home and keeping it. Lovelace's defense: Everybody's doing it.

Lovelace, an 18-year employee in the department who rose through the ranks to director, claimed that since he got the top job last year, numerous other employees have borrowed city equipment for their personal use. According to Lovelace, even his own boss, Leisure Services Director Harry Gross, took home city equipment.

Neither Gross nor City Manager John Lawrence deny that some employees have taken equipment home. Instead, they argue that there is a difference between the "borrowing" of city equipment for a weekend or so and the "keeping" of equipment they say Lovelace is guilty of.

There may be a difference, but the public may be hard-pressed to see the difference as anything other than a matter of degree.

Dunedin has a written policy that prohibits the "unauthorized use" of city equipment for personal benefit. The punishment for removing equipment without authorization is a one- to three-day suspension. But the policy was not enforced as it should have been.

The policy also needs to be rewritten. It appears to say that if someone in authority gives the okay, city employees can borrow city-owned equipment for their own use. But public employees should not be authorized to borrow public equipment and use it as if it were their own.

Equipment owned by the city of Dunedin was purchased with the public's money for doing the public's work. Allowing it to be borrowed by city employees for their private use not only speeds its deterioration but risks its disappearance when employees forget they borrowed it or leave their city jobs.

Such an open-ended policy is bound to give rise to some sticky questions. For example, who should pay to repair a piece of city equipment broken while it is in private use? Certainly not the taxpayers.

And how long is too long to allow equipment to be borrowed? A weekend? A month? What if the employee who borrowed the equipment loans it to someone who isn't a city employee? Can the city really maintain inventory control when employees can use the city equipment room as their own personal toolshed?

The Lovelace incident may have been an embarrassment to the city of Dunedin, but it served the purpose of exposing a weakness in city policies relating to the use of city equipment. City commissioners should make sure the policies get fixed and are enforced.

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