Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Homewood Councilwoman Barry Smith
Homewood Councilwoman Barry Smith has clarified her remarks last week about city employees misusing credit cards to indicate she doesn’t think anyone was illegally using credit cards.
She is just frustrated that the city has an outdated credit card policy.
Smith said during a Homewood City Council Finance Committee meeting last week that “way too many” Homewood city employees have a city credit card and, in some cases, are misusing those cards.
“Never was this about any particular person; never was this about one particular charge,” Smith now is clarifying. “It's the cumulative effect of looking at these bills over time and thinking, ‘Wow, this is something that we should really start to address.’
“Frankly, I'm kind of mad at myself for having waited this long to address it because it could have been addressed earlier,” Smith said. “We're operating with something that is out of date to the point of being like a dinosaur. It's not even relevant to where we are right now.”
The current policy on the use of the city’s credit card predates Smith’s time on the council. The policy was established in 2010, and she joined the council in 2014.
The councilwoman was concerned that there are 37 city credit cards in use, a number she said is “way too many.” But she’s also concerned about the way those cards have been used.
“You use it for travel purposes, but I don't think the travel purposes were ever intended to include food,” Smith said. “It [the policy] doesn't say to not include food. That's the kind of thing that we've got to tighten up. We've got to put more definitive language into the policy that makes it very clear what appropriate charges are and what things are outside of those charges.
“If you're buying meals when you're on a conference, those meals need to fall under whatever our regular reimbursement rate is for meals, and you need to pay for those with your own personal credit card,” the councilwoman said. “You will be reimbursed for those. We just need to tighten up the language and make that policy something that truly gives the employees exactly what's expected of them.”
Smith said revisions to the credit card policy could come as soon as the Oct. 16 Finance Committee meeting. She will propose a return to department heads being the only persons to have a city credit card, with the exception of building maintenance manager Lee Garrett, who works for Building Inspections Superintendent Wyatt Pugh.
“He [Garrett] does a lot of repair work, and he might have an emergency repair on a weekend where he has to go buy a part for something,” Smith said.
He should not have to go to his supervisor’s house on a weekend to get a credit card if he needs to make an emergency repair, she said.
