The City’s Strategic Communications Director, Laura Cruz-Acosta, has a long record of stonewalling the media and sharing deceptive or false information.
Ask any local journalist assigned to City business.
She told Paul Schulz of KVIA that City Manager Mack was not available to answer questions about the City’s failure to process accrual payouts to retiring firefighters, nor was anyone else.
She instead issued a statement: “This review process [for processing accrual payouts] is highly complex and requires detailed, individualized analysis. Currently, we have only one staff member in the organization with the specialized expertise to perform this level of calculation.”
She goes on: “Accrual payouts are not specifically budgeted in advance because it is difficult to predict when an employee will retire or leave the organization. When that happens, the payout is processed using funds from the employee’s home department budget. There is no separate line item or dedicated funding pool in the General Fund for these expenses.”
So apparently accrual pay for firefighters does not actually accrue.
Think about that one.