DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Nine Investigates has spent the last 7 days exposing misspending on city-issued credit cards in Daytona Beach.
Today, Channel 9 learned that the city manager who is responsible for handling policies and procedures related to those cards was fired from the city of Winter Haven in 2016.
Yesterday, Channel 9 reported that the city manager was warned by a former employee about issues with city credit cards months ago.
We started going through each transaction line by line one week ago today, after a commissioner raised concerns about spending.
We found 10 non-city employees with access to a credit card, one of them spending nearly $80,000 in a year. Channel 9 also found thousands of dollars spent on hotels, flights, restaurants, and even retail stores. All of these findings are a clear violation of city policy and are now getting attention from state leaders.
Concerns over a lack of communication led to Deric Feacher being fired from Winter Haven in 2016, where he served as city manager. Here’s what commissioners said before making that decision.
“If I can’t go to Deric one-on-one to make things happen for the community and the betterment of the community, then what is the purpose of having that one-on-one relationship that’s not truly there?”
“I lost confidence in Deric, and tonight that holds true.”
“He didn’t have the experience to be the city manager.”
“I should not have to sit here and try to pry meetings out of him or come to him and say I have issues, what are the issues, to be told that I have to get two other commissioners.”
The city manager has ignored multiple interview requests with Channel 9 since last week. He has finally agreed to sit down with us on Monday.
However, when we asked him if he wanted to talk sooner about a former employee’s emails warning him of credit card misspending months ago, he stopped responding.
The city auditors’ findings were supposed to be shared during a workshop next Wednesday. We have been told that the meeting has been canceled, so we asked the city for a copy of his final report.
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