Joint Services Board Approves Scrap Metal Disposal Policy

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): A board overseeing a Kenosha city-county agency that provides public safety dispatch and law enforcement fleet services has approved a policy aimed at preventing employees from misappropriating scrap and recyclable materials.

The Joint Services Board Tuesday voted unanimously in favor of the policy. It calls for documenting and reporting to the appropriate department head scheduling and moving of such materials. It also requires returning to the agency proceeds obtained, especially, as it pertains to the handling of scrap metals and recyclable metal materials.

While Joint Services is known as the 911 telecommunications operations, it also oversees maintenance of squad cars for both the Kenosha Police and the Kenosha County Sheriff’s departments.

The policy comes in the wake of both a criminal and internal investigation into a long-time supervisor for the agency’s fleet maintenance. He was discovered to have enlisted the services of a relative who disposed of the scrap metal that piled up on a regular basis outside on the agency’s property at 1000 55th St.

The relative reportedly shared some of the proceeds with the employee, according to a report from the Walworth County Sheriff’s Department, which conducted its investigation of the Joint Services agency. The investigation took over two months.

While the investigation did not uncover the total proceeds the men received from scrap-metal, officials believe there was potential to recover tens of thousands of dollars over at least a decade.

The supervisor was suspended for 30 days without pay. He was not criminally charged, in part, because no policy was in place to facilitate proper disposal of the material. Nor were accountability measures in place, according to Joint Services officials.

Joint Services Director Joshua Nielsen said that under the policy, its fleet maintenance department takes scrap metals to the city’s recycling center, in small amounts. Larger amounts, including materials from dismantling of squad cars that in the past would pile up, would be handled by a recycling company from Racine. That company will provide a 15-yard Dumpster that would be hauled away.

“It’s something they would come out for about a week or so that we can fill it up with whatever we have and they’d take it,” he said. “When they deal with that large of an amount of items, there may be some return of funds back to Joint Services.”

Nielsen said that he did not expect the large collection to occur often, but that the agency was trying minimizing the use employee time for hauling scrap metals to the recycling site. He told the Joint Services Board that his agency was also looking at other recycling companies that could also facilitate the future disposal of scrap metal and electronic equipment.

Following the meeting, Nielsen said the policy that the board approved would to put in place formally what the agency has been doing since discovering improprieties in scrap metal disposal in late summer of last year.

Courtesy: www.kenoshanews.com