DeMarzo Quizzes Payment to Ex-Rec Director

WILDWOOD — Commissioner Gary DeMarzo made his questions about a finding made during the city’s annual audit public in an Aug. 28 memo to local news media and county Prosecutor’s Office.
After completing a review of the city’s financial records in July, the auditing firm of Ford, Scott, Seidenburg and Kennedy determined that the city had been lacking in four areas, one being its handling of Tagaloa George Burgess’ retirement benefits.
Burgess plead guilty in 2005 to stealing $112,122 in municipal money while he worked as the city’s recreation director over a five-year period. In June 2006, Superior Court Judge Carmen Alvarez sentenced Burgess to five years probation and 364 days in jail, in exchange for his guilty plea.
In his memo, DeMarzo said that, “Mr. Burgess was paid a total of $25,498.78, a number both calculated incorrectly and in violation of the City Ordinance.”
According to DeMarzo, “$20,000 in ‘sick time’ and an additional $5,498.78 in ‘vacation time’” less $8,053.09 in payroll taxes were paid to Bur-gess after his resignation, but before his court date.
So that Burgess was able to payback the full amount of $25,498.78 to the Superior Court, DeMarzo said “that the balance of $8,053.09 was given back to Mr. Burgess in what amounts to a ‘no interest’ personal loan.”
An action, he writes that was, “most disturbing” and was protested by several department heads both informally and formally.
According to the audit, the payout violated a city ordinance that governs the payment of retirement and vacation benefits to city workers. The city paid accumulated time to “an employee who resigned” and the payment included “a large portion related to unused sick time,” which “is not in accordance with ordinance 1010.”
DeMarzo added that he was not satisfied with city solicitor Marcus Karavan’s explanation.
“The only explanation was that ‘under te circumstance’ it was the correct course of action,” he wrote.
Karavan said, during an Aug. 22 meeting, that the interpretation of the ordinance was a matter of semantics and said both the county prosecutor and state Department of Community Affairs commended the city for its handling of the Burgess issue.