Insufficient staffing revealed in audit of fraud and waste at Parks and Recreation Department

A former employee of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department fraudulently submitted timesheets stating she was working, according to a report from the Office of the City Auditor, and she collected paychecks for six months in 2021 – although she did no work during that time.

The report says that temporary employee Desarae Ybarra, who resigned from her job as an IT geospatial technician with the parks department, was paid nearly $11,000 between July and December 2021, even though she failed to log into the system that collects the data she was supposed to be reporting. Brian Molloy, chief of investigations for the auditor’s office, said the matter has been referred to the Austin Police Department.

Auditors also found that two supervisors responsible for monitoring her work did not do so, with each saying they thought someone else was doing it. In failing to monitor Ybarra, auditors said, the supervisors wasted city resources.

Although the investigation primarily concerned an employee who did not perform her duties and the failure of her supervisors to take notice, the report also calls attention to the fact that the forestry program at the parks department is struggling to perform its duties because of a serious employee shortage.

Ybarra’s only duty was to enter tree data from Austin parks into a system called ArcGIS. She could access the system either through an iPad supplied by the city or by using her cell phone. Either way, the ArcGIS system would record information about the trees. In December 2021, the system sent an automated notice that Ybarra’s account would be “demoted” due to inactivity. The department’s asset management team notified manager Kirsten Schneider that Ybarra had not logged into the system since June.

Schneider then attempted to set up a meeting with Ybarra, but auditors said Ybarra did not respond to the request. She returned her city iPad and resigned within seven days of receiving notice that the city had discovered that she was not doing her job, according to the report.

Schneider’s boss is Joshua Erickson, forestry program manager for the parks department. In response to the audit, he wrote, “Ultimately, this is my responsibility, and I’m sorry that decisions I made allowed this to happen.”

Erickson explained that the when Ybarra’s supervisor left the city, “We were not able to temporarily backfill her position.” Because that position, as well as others, remained vacant, Erickson said Schneider offered to help manage Ybarra. However, they did not document what Schneider’s exact duties would be in helping Ybarra. He added that Ybarra had apparently been doing good work under her previous supervisor.

Either Schneider or Erickson signed each of Ybarra’s timesheets without checking the system to make sure she was actually doing any work.

Schneider wrote in response to the audit, “The Maintenance Supervisor to whom Ms. Ybarra reported left in July of 2021. As she departed, that Supervisor (not Joshua, as stated in the report), asked that I help ‘keep an eye’ on Ms. Ybarra, whose position was temporary and grant-funded. I was told that another employee had the list of parks from which Ms. Ybarra was working, and yet another had the ArcGIS permissions necessary to check her activity in that application. Those two employees were pulled into acting roles around this time to help cover other vacancies. There was no explicit transfer of supervisory responsibilities and now I am uncertain about what instructions were given to those staff members, if any. …

“In short, the project for which Ms. Ybarra was hired was intended to deliver a much-needed product (parkland tree inventory data) that we did not have capacity to produce with existing staff, but it relied on the same staff to ensure delivery. As staff dwindled and roles shifted to cover highest-priority needs, the capacity of those of us who remained to keep all balls in the air was inevitably compromised.”

Erickson wrote, “Through the roller coaster of Covid accommodations, we were encouraged to be accommodating to people with varying levels of comfort about gathering in offices and crew rooms. For some of our staff, we were able to allow them to report directly to the jobsite rather than come to our shop first. This allowed them to have more time on site and helped limit the number of people congregating in our crew room. It is both frustrating and disappointing that this employee took advantage of those accommodations.”

In order to demonstrate the difficulty parks department staff had in keeping up with its workload, Schneider referred to an August 2021 email from Erickson, which explained the staff situation.

Schneider wrote, “Even with the hiring freeze lifted, the email makes abundantly clear the instability of our staff situation at that time. Of the three new hires mentioned in the email, only one would remain on board more than a month, and 5 of the 7 new (full-time employees) we were granted in the FY22 budget were not posted for hire until spring of 2023 – a year and a half later – due to competing priorities in PARD’s Human Resources Department. As of this writing, 10 of the 23 employees to whom that email was addressed are no longer employed in PARD Forestry, and we currently stand at 15 vacancies.”

Assistant Director Jodi Jay wrote in a memo to auditors that “PARD Human Resources Division will review the report and take appropriate actions. Additionally, PARD will review and ensure all employees have taken and passed the most recent City of Austin Ethics Training regarding adherence with policies/procedures.”

Photo by Aquinassixthway, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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