Oct. 22, 2002 – If you're a working stiff and you don't get your piece of the St. John rock within the next year to year and a half, you may be permanently out of the running, St. John businessman Winston Bennett said Tuesday.
Bennett was speaking at a Tuesday seminar he put together at the Paradiso restaurant to enlighten local residents about the St. John real estate picture. Representatives of the island's two lending institutions, Bank of Nova Scotia and FirstBank, were on hand to help the 30 residents who attended the meeting learn about getting a mortgage.
If you're a buyer, the real estate picture is daunting. Marty Beechler, president-elect of the St. John Board of Realtors, said the supply of real property is diminishing and the price is escalating at a rapid rate. In December 2000, he said, there were 79 parcels of St. John land for sale under $100,000. In December 2001, the number was down to 55, and today there are 16 parcels on the market priced under $100,000. And that's just the land.
As far as housing, Beechler said, in December 2000, there were 64 homes listed for sale on St. John, 15 of them priced under $500,000. A year later, there were 53 for sale with a dozen of them priced under $500,000. Today, there are 37 houses on the market, with five priced under $500,000.
Beechler distributed a list of available land. The least-expensive parcel was $46,000, for a bit more than a quarter of an acre in Glucksberg. Listings aside, Bennett said the cheapest house on the market will run $595,000.
Bennett urged residents to beg and borrow from their relatives and friends to buy real estate, any real estate they can afford. He said even if the property you can afford doesn't have your dream view or location, it will provide a foot in the door. "The most important thing is to buy a place at the table," he said.
He predicted that construction costs will keep pace with inflation, but the cost of land will rise more quickly.
Beechler said home and land owners are not putting their holdings on the market now because poor stock market conditions don't offer them a better place to put their money to work.
Bennett, a member of the V.I. Banking Board, said that without some solution to St. John's housing crunch, he will be unable to find skilled professional people to work at his four tony restaurants. "The quality of our employees will start to diminish, because the more professional you are, the less you are willing to live in substandard conditions," he said.
Renters are paying $700 to $800 a month for apartments of 300 square feet, he said, and many units previously rented long term are now in the short-term market, further reducing the supply for permanent residents.
On the plus side, Bennett noted, most St. John homes include a rental apartment. If more people could get into home ownership, it would increase the number of apartments available by freeing up those where the potential homeowners now live. "The impact of putting 40 rental units on St. John would be tremendous," he said.
The bankers said they want to lend residents money to buy and build homes. However, borrowers must have good credit, which means paying off outstanding loans before applying for a mortgage, they said. And potential borrowers should get to know their banker.
"Don't wait until you need money to walk into a bank," said John McDonald, a vice president at FirstBank.
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AUDIT FAULTS PFA FOR MANAGEMENT, SPENDING ILLS
Oct. 22, 2002 – The first-ever federal audit of the V.I. Public Finance Authority has found that the agency "effectively raised capital through the issuance of bonds" but "did not effectively manage bond proceeds or funds from its own budget."
The draft report states that the PFA:
– Allowed bond proceeds to go unused past the date for remaining tax-exempt, leaving the agency susceptible to as much as $8.8 million in tax penalties.
– Allowed the use of $1.2 million in bond proceeds "for a mental health facility that was never opened."
– Did not adequately plan the construction of three schools prior to issuing contracts, causing the authority to incur cost overruns up to $17.3 million and delaying completion of the schools by as much as 600 days and more.
– Did not ensure that $29.6 million in funds were effectively or appropriately utilized.
– Incurred $2.3 million for work not related to the authority's primary functions of raising and managing capital for public projects. Such expenses involved, among other things, travel and cellular phones for employees of the Office of the Governor and meetings and consultations concerning such matters as the executive branch budget and government employee collective bargaining issues.
According to the draft report, the top executive of the PFA, Kenneth Mapp, was given repeated opportunities to comment on the findings but did not do so.
A copy also was provided to Mapp's predecessor, Amadeo Francis, "because he was in office during the period covered by the audit scope and during the entire period during which the audit was conducted." According to the draft report, Francis "concurred with the proposed recommendations and stated that the report accurately represented conditions" at the PFA during the period covered by the audit.
In fact, the report states that "despite attempts by [Francis] to alert responsible government officials of the instances of non-compliance with tax-related constraints on the use of bond proceeds, his warnings were essentially ignored."
The auditors recommend that the PFA board take the following actions:
– Require that bond proceeds be used in accordance with the time frames and other restrictions set forth in the Internal Revenue Code.
– Require that there be adequate planning before soliciting bids for construction contracts.
– Ensure that the ongoing school construction projects be completed as quickly as possible.
– Discontinue charging the costs of non-PFA services to the authority's operating budget.
– Obtain supporting documents for payments totaling $367,000 made to a contractor; or, failing this, consider asking the Attorney General's Office to initiate legal action for recovery of the money.
– Require that professional service contracts be awarded on the basis of competitive bids.
– Collect $571,000 due on loans to private entities and $706,000 due as reimbursement for expenses paid on behalf of the government of the Virgin Islands.
In a cover letter to Gov. Charles W. Turnbull dated Oct. 1, Arnold Van Beverhoudt, regional audit manager for the Office of Inspector General, set a deadline of Oct. 16 for the administration to respond to the draft report. The protocol is for the government's response to the draft report to be included in the final report. Turnbull reportedly submitted his response on Friday.
According to the draft document, efforts were made between July 10 and Aug. 13 by the Office of Inspector General to meet with Mapp, the authority's director of finance and administration, to discuss the audit findings, but these proved unsuccessful.
The document states that a preliminary draft was delivered to Mapp on July 10, and "after several followup requests," a meeting was scheduled for Aug. 6, when Mapp "stated that he was not prepared to discuss the report and requested an extension." A second meeting was scheduled for Aug. 13, but "shortly prior to the scheduled meeting time," the report states, "we received a fax from the director indicating that he was still not fully prepared to discuss the report. Therefore, we are issuing this formal draft report without benefit of an exit conference."
Following accounts of the contents of the draft published in The Avis and reported on the radio Tuesday, Mapp took to the airwaves in the afternoon to denounce the document as "fatally flawed and severely lacking in professional quality." Speaking on WVWI Radio, he said there was "no factual evidence" for the audit findings concerning school construction overruns, and that what overruns there have been "come nowhere close to $17 million."
He also sought to discredit the input of Francis cited repeatedly in the report. His predecessor, Mapp said, "did not leave the PFA under friendly circumstances … How objective can an audit report be that you take a terminated employee, and use that terminated employee to draft your report?"
And he suggested that Van Beverhoudt was the person who leaked the report to the news media. This prompted a response on air from the regional audit manager terming Mapp's comments "just a smokescreen to deflect attention away" from the substantive findings of the audit. Van Beverhoudt said it was "totally ridiculous to charge that I or any member of my staff leaked the report," and that anyone in his office who did so would risk losing their jobs. Noting that he is just a few years away from retirement, he added, "I'd be very stupid do something like that and jeopardize my benefits."
Francis, reached by telephone at his home in Puerto Rico Tuesday night, said of Mapp, "I think it's very unfortunate of him to characterize my service to the Virgin Islands in that way, but I guess we're all entitled to our own opinions." He confirmed that he, too, had received a copy of the preliminary draft in July for comment, and "I virtually accepted it verbatim."
Noting that he has been "silent on the reason for my leaving, my being left" by Turnbull, who fired him last December, Francis added, "I'm not going to get involved in the campaign … When the report comes out — and I hope it comes out before the election — it will speak for itself."
This was the first federal audit performed on the PFA, although in 1994 the Office of Inspector General issued a report on the bonded debt of the V.I. government and its autonomous agencies.
Bond proceeds unused for years
The audit found that bond proceeds of $27.6 million remained unused for up to 8½ years, although the Internal Revenue Code requires that any such proceeds be reprogrammed within three years in order to retain tax-exempt status. In April 1998, the Legislature approved reprogramming of money for various capital improvement projects comprising bond proceeds of:
– $7.7 million from $29.2 million in Highway Revenue Bonds (Transportation Trust Fund) Series 1989, unused for 8½ years.
– $3.5 million from $28.8 million in Special Tax Bonds (General Obligation Matching Fund/Hugo Insurance Claims Fund Program) Series 1991, unused for 7 years.
– $16.4 million from $215.1 million in Revenue Refunding Bonds (V.I. Government General Obligation/Matching Fund Loan Notes) Series 1992A, unused for 6 years.
As of September 2001, the draft audit report states, $7.3 million of the $27.6 million remained unused. After reviewing 16 public projects, "we determined that the agencies responsible for the projects had not made the effort to use all of the funds or, in some cases, did not intend to use the funds," the report states.
It notes that Francis stated in his Dec. 27, 2001, annual report to the governor that the PFA was "in gross violation of the terms" of the bond indentures and the IRS regulations.
The report states that the Legislature (in 1999) reprogrammed $1.1 million for final payment on th e purchase of the Michelle Motel for use a long-term mental health care facility, and another $1.2 million to renovate the structure. However, after the government bought the building and paid $100,000 for architectural plans, the commissioner of Health told the PFA that it was not suitable for the intended use. The $1.1 million and the $100,000 "were wasted," the report states.
(This should not be confused with the case of a mental health facility on St. Croix in which the government is accused of having misspent some $870,700 on a project that was pursued outside of standard procedures and ultimately scrapped, in what the Office of Inspector General called "a case study on the inefficiencies and waste of public funds." See "$1 million squandered on clinic that never was".)
Of about $2 million in bond proceeds appropriated for capital improvements, the audit found, some $750,000 was spent inappropriately. Francis "voiced his concerns that improper payments were being made from the bond funds," the report says, but "reluctantly approved legislative expenditures totaling over $608,000" while noting that "only about 7.5 percent of these monies are utilized for what might properly be deemed capital expenses."
According to the Internal Revenue Code, money paid for "incidental repairs and maintenance of property" is not a capital expenditure. Nor, the report says, were PFA payments of $52,000 for voting machines, $41,000 for speakers and $19,000 for the painting of a mural.
School rebuilding overruns and delays
The PFA issued $541.8 million in Series 1998E bonds, of which $40.2 million was earmarked for the reconstruction of three schools demolished by Hurricane Marilyn — $9.2 million for Peace Corps Elementary, $10.5 million for Lockhart Elementary and $20.5 million for Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School. According to the audit:
– Peace Corps had cost overruns of $3.1 million with the potential for more than $408,000 more for work performed under two pending change orders, and completion was delayed 376 days.
– Lockhart had cost overruns of $1.9 million with the potential for $535,000 more, and completion was delayed 331 days.
– BCB could have cost overruns of $8.7 million by the time the school is completed, and completion had been delayed 607 days as of July — or some 900 days to date.
Bidding and construction work began before architectural plans were completed, the audit found, and while the contracts let were below estimate, they did not include such work as removal of existing modular classrooms, installation of air conditioning, paving of access roads and parking lots and, in the case of BCB, construction of a gymnasium and additional classrooms. Also, the audit found, contracts lacked guaranteed maximum price provisions.
Inappropriate spending for services
In the area of professional service contracts, the audit found that in at least six instances, the PFA awarded contracts on a non-competitive basis for a total amount of $8.2 million. The draft report says the government paid:
– First Union Capital Markets $1.7 million from January 1999 through October 2001; according to the report, $450,000 was inappropriately spent, including for Organic Act revisions, obtaining federal grants and forgiveness of Federal Emergency Management Agency loans, discussion of V.I. government Fiscal Year 2001 and 2002 budget preparations, analysis of the cost of implementing step increases for unionized workers, analysis of salary proposals for teachers, analyses of retirement plans, collection of delinquent property taxes, and researching possible privatization of the V.I. public transit system and contracting out of the administration of the Workers' Compensation program.
– Harris, Beach and Wilcox $950,000 for bond counsel services between January 1999 and December 2001; the audit found that $42,000 was inappropriately spent, including for conferences with a private individual regarding the V.I. Hotel, "review of legislation related to a local communications firm," conferences regarding government payroll and deficits, conferences regarding hospital privatization and meetings regarding a mortgage foreclosure.
– Winston and Strawn $2.3 million, $1.8 million of it from the PFA's operating budget, for legal and government relations services from January 1999 through August 2001. The audit determined that $70,000 of the $1.8 million paid was for work related to the PFA, mainly in the area of rum tax issues, and the rest "related to functions of the Office of the Governor" — dealing with matters involving FEMA, debt to the Bureau of Prisons, and the memorandum of understanding between the government and the U.S. Interior Department — that should have been paid from that office's budget.
– Buchanan Ingersoll Professional Corp. $250,000 for bond counsel services between May 2000 and November 2001; the audit found that $86,000 was for work unrelated to the PFA, addressing such things as government employee stipends, teacher salaries, budget issues, a memorandum of understanding with Hovensa, government bankruptcy issues, problems in the Attorney General's Office and prospective investors on St. Croix.
– Johnston and Associates $367,000 for consultation services from February 1997 through January 1999 relating to the soliciting of Asian investors, the development of transshipment ports on St. Croix and the development of PFA economic strategies to benefit the territory. No documentation was provided for the work done, the report states; invoices submitted "only stated the time periods for which services were being billed." The contractor was a former U.S. senator, the report states, and when Francis objected to the lack of documentation, "authorizations for payment under this contract were made by the then-governor," Roy L. Schneider.
The draft report also questions a smattering of "small stuff" expenditures — such as airfare of $2,460 for an Office of the Governor employee "to attend a New York holiday party and meetings regarding 'various new transactions,'" $6,000 in cell phone charges submitted by Union Capital Markets over six months, and $1,738 "on behalf of a private individual who traveled to Norway."
Non-competitive award of contracts
Through 1998, "it was standard practice for the authority to award contracts competitively," the report states. But over the audit period, contracts totaling almost $8.2 million were awarded non-competitively, including those for financial advisers and bond counsel executed in January 2001 and approved by the PFA board retroactively a month later.
Francis noted in a memorandum to a Government House official that the PFA is not required to go through the competitive procurement process, but this "has been deemed a highly desirable procedure." He added regarding the non-competitive awarding of contracts, "I do not believe this is a healthy course to follow."
Loans unenforced and uncollected
The PFA has the authority to lend bond proceeds to private enterprises and did so in four cases over the audit period. It did not enforce the reimbursement of two such loans and failed to collect interest and credit enhancement fees totaling $571,000 "and was not reimbursed for $706,000 incurred on behalf of the government," the draft report states.
– In August 2000, the authority entered into a loan guarantee agreement with three companies to redevelop the old Yacht Haven Hotel and Marina. The developer, PRM Realty Group, entered into a $13 million financing arrangement with a lending institution with the PFA providing a limited guarantee cash deposit of $5 million. The developer agreed to pay interest quarterly to the authority according to a formula that guaranteed the PFA overall earnings of 10 percent including interest from the money-market ac count in which the $5 million was held.
As of March 2002, the report states, the developer owed the PFA $496,000 in interest but the authority had made no effort to collect it. More money may have been due from the money-market account, but the auditors were unable to obtain information needed to verify this. The authority also did not receive a $75,000 credit enhancement fee for 2001, bringing the total amount owed as of last Dec. 31 to $571,000.
– In February 1998, the PFA entered into a contract with PriceWaterhouse on behalf of the Office of the Governor for services pertaining to the possible sale of the Water and Power Authority. By July 1998, the authority had paid the accounting firm $515,000 out of designated loan funds from a 1989 bond issue.
The PFA board eventually authorized payment of $545,000 more, out of the authority's operating budget, then in August 2001 agreed to accept payment of $275,000 and a credit of $85,000 from the government, leaving the initial $515,000 plus another $191,000 still owed. Therefore, the draft audit report states, "the authority should seek reimbursement from the government for a total of $706,000."
Who makes up the PFA
The PFA was created as part of the Government Capital Improvement Act of 1988 as an autonomous instrumentality. The authority is mandated to assist the government in raising capital for essential public projects through bond issuance, investments and loans.
The PFA is governed by a five-member board consisting of the sitting governor as chair, the commissioner of Finance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and two private-sector representatives (required to be knowledgeable about "municipal" finance) who are appointed by governor and confirmed by the Legislature. The board consists at present of Gov. Turnbull, Bernice Turnbull, Ira Mills, St. Thomas accountant Roy D. Jackson and St. Croix businessman Paul Arnold.
Francis, an economist, served as the authority's director of administration and finance from January 1995 until last Dec. 31. He was fired in early December by Gov. Turnbull, who gave no reason for terminating his contract. Informed sources said at the time that the termination was not cordial and had to with Francis's refusal to approve a large payment to a government vendor.
On Jan. 30, the Legislature voted to award Francis the V.I. Medal of Honor and on Feb. 28, the PFA board voted to bring Francis back as a "transitory adviser" to what was then expected to be two persons who would assume his duties, as the board had decided to hire separate directors of finance and of administration.
Francis, however, never signed the offered contract, and on March 22, Gov. Turnbull announced that he had approved the contracting of former senator and lieutenant governor Kenneth Mapp to hold both positions, as Francis had done. Neither Jackson nor Arnold were at the board meeting where the hiring was approved.
Mapp's appointment had been widely rumored, although it was expected that he would get only one of the two jobs. In November 2001, he announced his candidacy for governor in the November 2002 election; although he is a Republican, he was expected to run as an independent. On Feb. 9, he announced that he had dropped out of the race. He gave no indication of whom he would support for the November election.
The draft audit report notes that the recommended changes in policies and procedures to bring the territory into conformity with federal regulations "would have to be strictly enforced by the governor, in his capacity as chairman of the authority's board of directors, in order to be effective."
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The draft report states that the PFA:
– Allowed bond proceeds to go unused past the date for remaining tax-exempt, leaving the agency susceptible to as much as $8.8 million in tax penalties.
– Allowed the use of $1.2 million in bond proceeds "for a mental health facility that was never opened."
– Did not adequately plan the construction of three schools prior to issuing contracts, causing the authority to incur cost overruns up to $17.3 million and delaying completion of the schools by as much as 600 days and more.
– Did not ensure that $29.6 million in funds were effectively or appropriately utilized.
– Incurred $2.3 million for work not related to the authority's primary functions of raising and managing capital for public projects. Such expenses involved, among other things, travel and cellular phones for employees of the Office of the Governor and meetings and consultations concerning such matters as the executive branch budget and government employee collective bargaining issues.
According to the draft report, the top executive of the PFA, Kenneth Mapp, was given repeated opportunities to comment on the findings but did not do so.
A copy also was provided to Mapp's predecessor, Amadeo Francis, "because he was in office during the period covered by the audit scope and during the entire period during which the audit was conducted." According to the draft report, Francis "concurred with the proposed recommendations and stated that the report accurately represented conditions" at the PFA during the period covered by the audit.
In fact, the report states that "despite attempts by [Francis] to alert responsible government officials of the instances of non-compliance with tax-related constraints on the use of bond proceeds, his warnings were essentially ignored."
The auditors recommend that the PFA board take the following actions:
– Require that bond proceeds be used in accordance with the time frames and other restrictions set forth in the Internal Revenue Code.
– Require that there be adequate planning before soliciting bids for construction contracts.
– Ensure that the ongoing school construction projects be completed as quickly as possible.
– Discontinue charging the costs of non-PFA services to the authority's operating budget.
– Obtain supporting documents for payments totaling $367,000 made to a contractor; or, failing this, consider asking the Attorney General's Office to initiate legal action for recovery of the money.
– Require that professional service contracts be awarded on the basis of competitive bids.
– Collect $571,000 due on loans to private entities and $706,000 due as reimbursement for expenses paid on behalf of the government of the Virgin Islands.
In a cover letter to Gov. Charles W. Turnbull dated Oct. 1, Arnold Van Beverhoudt, regional audit manager for the Office of Inspector General, set a deadline of Oct. 16 for the administration to respond to the draft report. The protocol is for the government's response to the draft report to be included in the final report. Turnbull reportedly submitted his response on Friday.
According to the draft document, efforts were made between July 10 and Aug. 13 by the Office of Inspector General to meet with Mapp, the authority's director of finance and administration, to discuss the audit findings, but these proved unsuccessful.
The document states that a preliminary draft was delivered to Mapp on July 10, and "after several followup requests," a meeting was scheduled for Aug. 6, when Mapp "stated that he was not prepared to discuss the report and requested an extension." A second meeting was scheduled for Aug. 13, but "shortly prior to the scheduled meeting time," the report states, "we received a fax from the director indicating that he was still not fully prepared to discuss the report. Therefore, we are issuing this formal draft report without benefit of an exit conference."
Following accounts of the contents of the draft published in The Avis and reported on the radio Tuesday, Mapp took to the airwaves in the afternoon to denounce the document as "fatally flawed and severely lacking in professional quality." Speaking on WVWI Radio, he said there was "no factual evidence" for the audit findings concerning school construction overruns, and that what overruns there have been "come nowhere close to $17 million."
He also sought to discredit the input of Francis cited repeatedly in the report. His predecessor, Mapp said, "did not leave the PFA under friendly circumstances … How objective can an audit report be that you take a terminated employee, and use that terminated employee to draft your report?"
And he suggested that Van Beverhoudt was the person who leaked the report to the news media. This prompted a response on air from the regional audit manager terming Mapp's comments "just a smokescreen to deflect attention away" from the substantive findings of the audit. Van Beverhoudt said it was "totally ridiculous to charge that I or any member of my staff leaked the report," and that anyone in his office who did so would risk losing their jobs. Noting that he is just a few years away from retirement, he added, "I'd be very stupid do something like that and jeopardize my benefits."
Francis, reached by telephone at his home in Puerto Rico Tuesday night, said of Mapp, "I think it's very unfortunate of him to characterize my service to the Virgin Islands in that way, but I guess we're all entitled to our own opinions." He confirmed that he, too, had received a copy of the preliminary draft in July for comment, and "I virtually accepted it verbatim."
Noting that he has been "silent on the reason for my leaving, my being left" by Turnbull, who fired him last December, Francis added, "I'm not going to get involved in the campaign … When the report comes out — and I hope it comes out before the election — it will speak for itself."
This was the first federal audit performed on the PFA, although in 1994 the Office of Inspector General issued a report on the bonded debt of the V.I. government and its autonomous agencies.
Bond proceeds unused for years
The audit found that bond proceeds of $27.6 million remained unused for up to 8½ years, although the Internal Revenue Code requires that any such proceeds be reprogrammed within three years in order to retain tax-exempt status. In April 1998, the Legislature approved reprogramming of money for various capital improvement projects comprising bond proceeds of:
– $7.7 million from $29.2 million in Highway Revenue Bonds (Transportation Trust Fund) Series 1989, unused for 8½ years.
– $3.5 million from $28.8 million in Special Tax Bonds (General Obligation Matching Fund/Hugo Insurance Claims Fund Program) Series 1991, unused for 7 years.
– $16.4 million from $215.1 million in Revenue Refunding Bonds (V.I. Government General Obligation/Matching Fund Loan Notes) Series 1992A, unused for 6 years.
As of September 2001, the draft audit report states, $7.3 million of the $27.6 million remained unused. After reviewing 16 public projects, "we determined that the agencies responsible for the projects had not made the effort to use all of the funds or, in some cases, did not intend to use the funds," the report states.
It notes that Francis stated in his Dec. 27, 2001, annual report to the governor that the PFA was "in gross violation of the terms" of the bond indentures and the IRS regulations.
The report states that the Legislature (in 1999) reprogrammed $1.1 million for final payment on th e purchase of the Michelle Motel for use a long-term mental health care facility, and another $1.2 million to renovate the structure. However, after the government bought the building and paid $100,000 for architectural plans, the commissioner of Health told the PFA that it was not suitable for the intended use. The $1.1 million and the $100,000 "were wasted," the report states.
(This should not be confused with the case of a mental health facility on St. Croix in which the government is accused of having misspent some $870,700 on a project that was pursued outside of standard procedures and ultimately scrapped, in what the Office of Inspector General called "a case study on the inefficiencies and waste of public funds." See "$1 million squandered on clinic that never was".)
Of about $2 million in bond proceeds appropriated for capital improvements, the audit found, some $750,000 was spent inappropriately. Francis "voiced his concerns that improper payments were being made from the bond funds," the report says, but "reluctantly approved legislative expenditures totaling over $608,000" while noting that "only about 7.5 percent of these monies are utilized for what might properly be deemed capital expenses."
According to the Internal Revenue Code, money paid for "incidental repairs and maintenance of property" is not a capital expenditure. Nor, the report says, were PFA payments of $52,000 for voting machines, $41,000 for speakers and $19,000 for the painting of a mural.
School rebuilding overruns and delays
The PFA issued $541.8 million in Series 1998E bonds, of which $40.2 million was earmarked for the reconstruction of three schools demolished by Hurricane Marilyn — $9.2 million for Peace Corps Elementary, $10.5 million for Lockhart Elementary and $20.5 million for Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School. According to the audit:
– Peace Corps had cost overruns of $3.1 million with the potential for more than $408,000 more for work performed under two pending change orders, and completion was delayed 376 days.
– Lockhart had cost overruns of $1.9 million with the potential for $535,000 more, and completion was delayed 331 days.
– BCB could have cost overruns of $8.7 million by the time the school is completed, and completion had been delayed 607 days as of July — or some 900 days to date.
Bidding and construction work began before architectural plans were completed, the audit found, and while the contracts let were below estimate, they did not include such work as removal of existing modular classrooms, installation of air conditioning, paving of access roads and parking lots and, in the case of BCB, construction of a gymnasium and additional classrooms. Also, the audit found, contracts lacked guaranteed maximum price provisions.
Inappropriate spending for services
In the area of professional service contracts, the audit found that in at least six instances, the PFA awarded contracts on a non-competitive basis for a total amount of $8.2 million. The draft report says the government paid:
– First Union Capital Markets $1.7 million from January 1999 through October 2001; according to the report, $450,000 was inappropriately spent, including for Organic Act revisions, obtaining federal grants and forgiveness of Federal Emergency Management Agency loans, discussion of V.I. government Fiscal Year 2001 and 2002 budget preparations, analysis of the cost of implementing step increases for unionized workers, analysis of salary proposals for teachers, analyses of retirement plans, collection of delinquent property taxes, and researching possible privatization of the V.I. public transit system and contracting out of the administration of the Workers' Compensation program.
– Harris, Beach and Wilcox $950,000 for bond counsel services between January 1999 and December 2001; the audit found that $42,000 was inappropriately spent, including for conferences with a private individual regarding the V.I. Hotel, "review of legislation related to a local communications firm," conferences regarding government payroll and deficits, conferences regarding hospital privatization and meetings regarding a mortgage foreclosure.
– Winston and Strawn $2.3 million, $1.8 million of it from the PFA's operating budget, for legal and government relations services from January 1999 through August 2001. The audit determined that $70,000 of the $1.8 million paid was for work related to the PFA, mainly in the area of rum tax issues, and the rest "related to functions of the Office of the Governor" — dealing with matters involving FEMA, debt to the Bureau of Prisons, and the memorandum of understanding between the government and the U.S. Interior Department — that should have been paid from that office's budget.
– Buchanan Ingersoll Professional Corp. $250,000 for bond counsel services between May 2000 and November 2001; the audit found that $86,000 was for work unrelated to the PFA, addressing such things as government employee stipends, teacher salaries, budget issues, a memorandum of understanding with Hovensa, government bankruptcy issues, problems in the Attorney General's Office and prospective investors on St. Croix.
– Johnston and Associates $367,000 for consultation services from February 1997 through January 1999 relating to the soliciting of Asian investors, the development of transshipment ports on St. Croix and the development of PFA economic strategies to benefit the territory. No documentation was provided for the work done, the report states; invoices submitted "only stated the time periods for which services were being billed." The contractor was a former U.S. senator, the report states, and when Francis objected to the lack of documentation, "authorizations for payment under this contract were made by the then-governor," Roy L. Schneider.
The draft report also questions a smattering of "small stuff" expenditures — such as airfare of $2,460 for an Office of the Governor employee "to attend a New York holiday party and meetings regarding 'various new transactions,'" $6,000 in cell phone charges submitted by Union Capital Markets over six months, and $1,738 "on behalf of a private individual who traveled to Norway."
Non-competitive award of contracts
Through 1998, "it was standard practice for the authority to award contracts competitively," the report states. But over the audit period, contracts totaling almost $8.2 million were awarded non-competitively, including those for financial advisers and bond counsel executed in January 2001 and approved by the PFA board retroactively a month later.
Francis noted in a memorandum to a Government House official that the PFA is not required to go through the competitive procurement process, but this "has been deemed a highly desirable procedure." He added regarding the non-competitive awarding of contracts, "I do not believe this is a healthy course to follow."
Loans unenforced and uncollected
The PFA has the authority to lend bond proceeds to private enterprises and did so in four cases over the audit period. It did not enforce the reimbursement of two such loans and failed to collect interest and credit enhancement fees totaling $571,000 "and was not reimbursed for $706,000 incurred on behalf of the government," the draft report states.
– In August 2000, the authority entered into a loan guarantee agreement with three companies to redevelop the old Yacht Haven Hotel and Marina. The developer, PRM Realty Group, entered into a $13 million financing arrangement with a lending institution with the PFA providing a limited guarantee cash deposit of $5 million. The developer agreed to pay interest quarterly to the authority according to a formula that guaranteed the PFA overall earnings of 10 percent including interest from the money-market ac count in which the $5 million was held.
As of March 2002, the report states, the developer owed the PFA $496,000 in interest but the authority had made no effort to collect it. More money may have been due from the money-market account, but the auditors were unable to obtain information needed to verify this. The authority also did not receive a $75,000 credit enhancement fee for 2001, bringing the total amount owed as of last Dec. 31 to $571,000.
– In February 1998, the PFA entered into a contract with PriceWaterhouse on behalf of the Office of the Governor for services pertaining to the possible sale of the Water and Power Authority. By July 1998, the authority had paid the accounting firm $515,000 out of designated loan funds from a 1989 bond issue.
The PFA board eventually authorized payment of $545,000 more, out of the authority's operating budget, then in August 2001 agreed to accept payment of $275,000 and a credit of $85,000 from the government, leaving the initial $515,000 plus another $191,000 still owed. Therefore, the draft audit report states, "the authority should seek reimbursement from the government for a total of $706,000."
Who makes up the PFA
The PFA was created as part of the Government Capital Improvement Act of 1988 as an autonomous instrumentality. The authority is mandated to assist the government in raising capital for essential public projects through bond issuance, investments and loans.
The PFA is governed by a five-member board consisting of the sitting governor as chair, the commissioner of Finance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and two private-sector representatives (required to be knowledgeable about "municipal" finance) who are appointed by governor and confirmed by the Legislature. The board consists at present of Gov. Turnbull, Bernice Turnbull, Ira Mills, St. Thomas accountant Roy D. Jackson and St. Croix businessman Paul Arnold.
Francis, an economist, served as the authority's director of administration and finance from January 1995 until last Dec. 31. He was fired in early December by Gov. Turnbull, who gave no reason for terminating his contract. Informed sources said at the time that the termination was not cordial and had to with Francis's refusal to approve a large payment to a government vendor.
On Jan. 30, the Legislature voted to award Francis the V.I. Medal of Honor and on Feb. 28, the PFA board voted to bring Francis back as a "transitory adviser" to what was then expected to be two persons who would assume his duties, as the board had decided to hire separate directors of finance and of administration.
Francis, however, never signed the offered contract, and on March 22, Gov. Turnbull announced that he had approved the contracting of former senator and lieutenant governor Kenneth Mapp to hold both positions, as Francis had done. Neither Jackson nor Arnold were at the board meeting where the hiring was approved.
Mapp's appointment had been widely rumored, although it was expected that he would get only one of the two jobs. In November 2001, he announced his candidacy for governor in the November 2002 election; although he is a Republican, he was expected to run as an independent. On Feb. 9, he announced that he had dropped out of the race. He gave no indication of whom he would support for the November election.
The draft audit report notes that the recommended changes in policies and procedures to bring the territory into conformity with federal regulations "would have to be strictly enforced by the governor, in his capacity as chairman of the authority's board of directors, in order to be effective."
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AUDIT FAULTS PFA FOR MANAGEMENT, SPENDING ILLS
Oct. 22, 2002 – The first-ever federal audit of the V.I. Public Finance Authority has found that the agency "effectively raised capital through the issuance of bonds" but "did not effectively manage bond proceeds or funds from its own budget."
The draft report states that the PFA:
– Allowed bond proceeds to go unused past the date for remaining tax-exempt, leaving the agency susceptible to as much as $8.8 million in tax penalties.
– Allowed the use of $1.2 million in bond proceeds "for a mental health facility that was never opened."
– Did not adequately plan the construction of three schools prior to issuing contracts, causing the authority to incur cost overruns up to $17.3 million and delaying completion of the schools by as much as 600 days and more.
– Did not ensure that $29.6 million in funds were effectively or appropriately utilized.
– Incurred $2.3 million for work not related to the authority's primary functions of raising and managing capital for public projects. Such expenses involved, among other things, travel and cellular phones for employees of the Office of the Governor and meetings and consultations concerning such matters as the executive branch budget and government employee collective bargaining issues.
According to the draft report, the top executive of the PFA, Kenneth Mapp, was given repeated opportunities to comment on the findings but did not do so.
A copy also was provided to Mapp's predecessor, Amadeo Francis, "because he was in office during the period covered by the audit scope and during the entire period during which the audit was conducted." According to the draft report, Francis "concurred with the proposed recommendations and stated that the report accurately represented conditions" at the PFA during the period covered by the audit.
In fact, the report states that "despite attempts by [Francis] to alert responsible government officials of the instances of non-compliance with tax-related constraints on the use of bond proceeds, his warnings were essentially ignored."
The auditors recommend that the PFA board take the following actions:
– Require that bond proceeds be used in accordance with the time frames and other restrictions set forth in the Internal Revenue Code.
– Require that there be adequate planning before soliciting bids for construction contracts.
– Ensure that the ongoing school construction projects be completed as quickly as possible.
– Discontinue charging the costs of non-PFA services to the authority's operating budget.
– Obtain supporting documents for payments totaling $367,000 made to a contractor; or, failing this, consider asking the Attorney General's Office to initiate legal action for recovery of the money.
– Require that professional service contracts be awarded on the basis of competitive bids.
– Collect $571,000 due on loans to private entities and $706,000 due as reimbursement for expenses paid on behalf of the government of the Virgin Islands.
In a cover letter to Gov. Charles W. Turnbull dated Oct. 1, Arnold Van Beverhoudt, regional audit manager for the Office of Inspector General, set a deadline of Oct. 16 for the administration to respond to the draft report. The protocol is for the government's response to the draft report to be included in the final report. Turnbull reportedly submitted his response on Friday.
According to the draft document, efforts were made between July 10 and Aug. 13 by the Office of Inspector General to meet with Mapp, the authority's director of finance and administration, to discuss the audit findings, but these proved unsuccessful.
The document states that a preliminary draft was delivered to Mapp on July 10, and "after several followup requests," a meeting was scheduled for Aug. 6, when Mapp "stated that he was not prepared to discuss the report and requested an extension." A second meeting was scheduled for Aug. 13, but "shortly prior to the scheduled meeting time," the report states, "we received a fax from the director indicating that he was still not fully prepared to discuss the report. Therefore, we are issuing this formal draft report without benefit of an exit conference."
Following accounts of the contents of the draft published in The Avis and reported on the radio Tuesday, Mapp took to the airwaves in the afternoon to denounce the document as "fatally flawed and severely lacking in professional quality." Speaking on WVWI Radio, he said there was "no factual evidence" for the audit findings concerning school construction overruns, and that what overruns there have been "come nowhere close to $17 million."
He also sought to discredit the input of Francis cited repeatedly in the report. His predecessor, Mapp said, "did not leave the PFA under friendly circumstances … How objective can an audit report be that you take a terminated employee, and use that terminated employee to draft your report?"
And he suggested that Van Beverhoudt was the person who leaked the report to the news media. This prompted a response on air from the regional audit manager terming Mapp's comments "just a smokescreen to deflect attention away" from the substantive findings of the audit. Van Beverhoudt said it was "totally ridiculous to charge that I or any member of my staff leaked the report," and that anyone in his office who did so would risk losing their jobs. Noting that he is just a few years away from retirement, he added, "I'd be very stupid do something like that and jeopardize my benefits."
Francis, reached by telephone at his home in Puerto Rico Tuesday night, said of Mapp, "I think it's very unfortunate of him to characterize my service to the Virgin Islands in that way, but I guess we're all entitled to our own opinions." He confirmed that he, too, had received a copy of the preliminary draft in July for comment, and "I virtually accepted it verbatim."
Noting that he has been "silent on the reason for my leaving, my being left" by Turnbull, who fired him last December, Francis added, "I'm not going to get involved in the campaign … When the report comes out — and I hope it comes out before the election — it will speak for itself."
This was the first federal audit performed on the PFA, although in 1994 the Office of Inspector General issued a report on the bonded debt of the V.I. government and its autonomous agencies.
Bond proceeds unused for years
The audit found that bond proceeds of $27.6 million remained unused for up to 8½ years, although the Internal Revenue Code requires that any such proceeds be reprogrammed within three years in order to retain tax-exempt status. In April 1998, the Legislature approved reprogramming of money for various capital improvement projects comprising bond proceeds of:
– $7.7 million from $29.2 million in Highway Revenue Bonds (Transportation Trust Fund) Series 1989, unused for 8½ years.
– $3.5 million from $28.8 million in Special Tax Bonds (General Obligation Matching Fund/Hugo Insurance Claims Fund Program) Series 1991, unused for 7 years.
– $16.4 million from $215.1 million in Revenue Refunding Bonds (V.I. Government General Obligation/Matching Fund Loan Notes) Series 1992A, unused for 6 years.
As of September 2001, the draft audit report states, $7.3 million of the $27.6 million remained unused. After reviewing 16 public projects, "we determined that the agencies responsible for the projects had not made the effort to use all of the funds or, in some cases, did not intend to use the funds," the report states.
It notes that Francis stated in his Dec. 27, 2001, annual report to the governor that the PFA was "in gross violation of the terms" of the bond indentures and the IRS regulations.
The report states that the Legislature (in 1999) reprogrammed $1.1 million for final payment on th e purchase of the Michelle Motel for use a long-term mental health care facility, and another $1.2 million to renovate the structure. However, after the government bought the building and paid $100,000 for architectural plans, the commissioner of Health told the PFA that it was not suitable for the intended use. The $1.1 million and the $100,000 "were wasted," the report states.
(This should not be confused with the case of a mental health facility on St. Croix in which the government is accused of having misspent some $870,700 on a project that was pursued outside of standard procedures and ultimately scrapped, in what the Office of Inspector General called "a case study on the inefficiencies and waste of public funds." See "$1 million squandered on clinic that never was".)
Of about $2 million in bond proceeds appropriated for capital improvements, the audit found, some $750,000 was spent inappropriately. Francis "voiced his concerns that improper payments were being made from the bond funds," the report says, but "reluctantly approved legislative expenditures totaling over $608,000" while noting that "only about 7.5 percent of these monies are utilized for what might properly be deemed capital expenses."
According to the Internal Revenue Code, money paid for "incidental repairs and maintenance of property" is not a capital expenditure. Nor, the report says, were PFA payments of $52,000 for voting machines, $41,000 for speakers and $19,000 for the painting of a mural.
School rebuilding overruns and delays
The PFA issued $541.8 million in Series 1998E bonds, of which $40.2 million was earmarked for the reconstruction of three schools demolished by Hurricane Marilyn — $9.2 million for Peace Corps Elementary, $10.5 million for Lockhart Elementary and $20.5 million for Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School. According to the audit:
– Peace Corps had cost overruns of $3.1 million with the potential for more than $408,000 more for work performed under two pending change orders, and completion was delayed 376 days.
– Lockhart had cost overruns of $1.9 million with the potential for $535,000 more, and completion was delayed 331 days.
– BCB could have cost overruns of $8.7 million by the time the school is completed, and completion had been delayed 607 days as of July — or some 900 days to date.
Bidding and construction work began before architectural plans were completed, the audit found, and while the contracts let were below estimate, they did not include such work as removal of existing modular classrooms, installation of air conditioning, paving of access roads and parking lots and, in the case of BCB, construction of a gymnasium and additional classrooms. Also, the audit found, contracts lacked guaranteed maximum price provisions.
Inappropriate spending for services
In the area of professional service contracts, the audit found that in at least six instances, the PFA awarded contracts on a non-competitive basis for a total amount of $8.2 million. The draft report says the government paid:
– First Union Capital Markets $1.7 million from January 1999 through October 2001; according to the report, $450,000 was inappropriately spent, including for Organic Act revisions, obtaining federal grants and forgiveness of Federal Emergency Management Agency loans, discussion of V.I. government Fiscal Year 2001 and 2002 budget preparations, analysis of the cost of implementing step increases for unionized workers, analysis of salary proposals for teachers, analyses of retirement plans, collection of delinquent property taxes, and researching possible privatization of the V.I. public transit system and contracting out of the administration of the Workers' Compensation program.
– Harris, Beach and Wilcox $950,000 for bond counsel services between January 1999 and December 2001; the audit found that $42,000 was inappropriately spent, including for conferences with a private individual regarding the V.I. Hotel, "review of legislation related to a local communications firm," conferences regarding government payroll and deficits, conferences regarding hospital privatization and meetings regarding a mortgage foreclosure.
– Winston and Strawn $2.3 million, $1.8 million of it from the PFA's operating budget, for legal and government relations services from January 1999 through August 2001. The audit determined that $70,000 of the $1.8 million paid was for work related to the PFA, mainly in the area of rum tax issues, and the rest "related to functions of the Office of the Governor" — dealing with matters involving FEMA, debt to the Bureau of Prisons, and the memorandum of understanding between the government and the U.S. Interior Department — that should have been paid from that office's budget.
– Buchanan Ingersoll Professional Corp. $250,000 for bond counsel services between May 2000 and November 2001; the audit found that $86,000 was for work unrelated to the PFA, addressing such things as government employee stipends, teacher salaries, budget issues, a memorandum of understanding with Hovensa, government bankruptcy issues, problems in the Attorney General's Office and prospective investors on St. Croix.
– Johnston and Associates $367,000 for consultation services from February 1997 through January 1999 relating to the soliciting of Asian investors, the development of transshipment ports on St. Croix and the development of PFA economic strategies to benefit the territory. No documentation was provided for the work done, the report states; invoices submitted "only stated the time periods for which services were being billed." The contractor was a former U.S. senator, the report states, and when Francis objected to the lack of documentation, "authorizations for payment under this contract were made by the then-governor," Roy L. Schneider.
The draft report also questions a smattering of "small stuff" expenditures — such as airfare of $2,460 for an Office of the Governor employee "to attend a New York holiday party and meetings regarding 'various new transactions,'" $6,000 in cell phone charges submitted by Union Capital Markets over six months, and $1,738 "on behalf of a private individual who traveled to Norway."
Non-competitive award of contracts
Through 1998, "it was standard practice for the authority to award contracts competitively," the report states. But over the audit period, contracts totaling almost $8.2 million were awarded non-competitively, including those for financial advisers and bond counsel executed in January 2001 and approved by the PFA board retroactively a month later.
Francis noted in a memorandum to a Government House official that the PFA is not required to go through the competitive procurement process, but this "has been deemed a highly desirable procedure." He added regarding the non-competitive awarding of contracts, "I do not believe this is a healthy course to follow."
Loans unenforced and uncollected
The PFA has the authority to lend bond proceeds to private enterprises and did so in four cases over the audit period. It did not enforce the reimbursement of two such loans and failed to collect interest and credit enhancement fees totaling $571,000 "and was not reimbursed for $706,000 incurred on behalf of the government," the draft report states.
– In August 2000, the authority entered into a loan guarantee agreement with three companies to redevelop the old Yacht Haven Hotel and Marina. The developer, PRM Realty Group, entered into a $13 million financing arrangement with a lending institution with the PFA providing a limited guarantee cash deposit of $5 million. The developer agreed to pay interest quarterly to the authority according to a formula that guaranteed the PFA overall earnings of 10 percent including interest from the money-market account in which the $5 million was held.
As of March 2002, the report states, the developer owed the PFA $496,000 in interest but the authority had made no effort to collect it. More money may have been due from the money-market account, but the auditors were unable to obtain information needed to verify this. The authority also did not receive a $75,000 credit enhancement fee for 2001, bringing the total amount owed as of last Dec. 31 to $571,000.
– In February 1998, the PFA entered into a contract with PriceWaterhouse on behalf of the Office of the Governor for services pertaining to the possible sale of the Water and Power Authority. By July 1998, the authority had paid the accounting firm $515,000 out of designated loan funds from a 1989 bond issue.
The PFA board eventually authorized payment of $545,000 more, out of the authority's operating budget, then in August 2001 agreed to accept payment of $275,000 and a credit of $85,000 from the government, leaving the initial $515,000 plus another $191,000 still owed. Therefore, the draft audit report states, "the authority should seek reimbursement from the government for a total of $706,000."
Who makes up the PFA
The PFA was created as part of the Government Capital Improvement Act of 1988 as an autonomous instrumentality. The authority is mandated to assist the government in raising capital for essential public projects through bond issuance, investments and loans.
The PFA is governed by a five-member board consisting of the sitting governor as chair, the commissioner of Finance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and two private-sector representatives (required to be knowledgeable about "municipal" finance) who are appointed by governor and confirmed by the Legislature. The board consists at present of Gov. Turnbull, Bernice Turnbull, Ira Mills, St. Thomas accountant Roy D. Jackson and St. Croix businessman Paul Arnold.
Francis, an economist, served as the authority's director of administration and finance from January 1995 until last Dec. 31. He was fired in early December by Gov. Turnbull, who gave no reason for terminating his contract. Informed sources said at the time that the termination was not cordial and had to with Francis's refusal to approve a large payment to a government vendor.
On Jan. 30, the Legislature voted to award Francis the V.I. Medal of Honor and on Feb. 28, the PFA board voted to bring Francis back as a "transitory adviser" to what was then expected to be two persons who would assume his duties, as the board had decided to hire separate directors of finance and of administration.
Francis, however, never signed the offered contract, and on March 22, Gov. Turnbull announced that he had approved the contracting of former senator and lieutenant governor Kenneth Mapp to hold both positions, as Francis had done. Neither Jackson nor Arnold were at the board meeting where the hiring was approved.
Mapp's appointment had been widely rumored, although it was expected that he would get only one of the two jobs. In November 2001, he announced his candidacy for governor in the November 2002 election; although he is a Republican, he was expected to run as an independent. On Feb. 9, he announced that he had dropped out of the race. He gave no indication of whom he would support for the November election.
The draft audit report notes that the recommended changes in policies and procedures to bring the territory into conformity with federal regulations "would have to be strictly enforced by the governor, in his capacity as chairman of the authority's board of directors, in order to be effective."
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
The draft report states that the PFA:
– Allowed bond proceeds to go unused past the date for remaining tax-exempt, leaving the agency susceptible to as much as $8.8 million in tax penalties.
– Allowed the use of $1.2 million in bond proceeds "for a mental health facility that was never opened."
– Did not adequately plan the construction of three schools prior to issuing contracts, causing the authority to incur cost overruns up to $17.3 million and delaying completion of the schools by as much as 600 days and more.
– Did not ensure that $29.6 million in funds were effectively or appropriately utilized.
– Incurred $2.3 million for work not related to the authority's primary functions of raising and managing capital for public projects. Such expenses involved, among other things, travel and cellular phones for employees of the Office of the Governor and meetings and consultations concerning such matters as the executive branch budget and government employee collective bargaining issues.
According to the draft report, the top executive of the PFA, Kenneth Mapp, was given repeated opportunities to comment on the findings but did not do so.
A copy also was provided to Mapp's predecessor, Amadeo Francis, "because he was in office during the period covered by the audit scope and during the entire period during which the audit was conducted." According to the draft report, Francis "concurred with the proposed recommendations and stated that the report accurately represented conditions" at the PFA during the period covered by the audit.
In fact, the report states that "despite attempts by [Francis] to alert responsible government officials of the instances of non-compliance with tax-related constraints on the use of bond proceeds, his warnings were essentially ignored."
The auditors recommend that the PFA board take the following actions:
– Require that bond proceeds be used in accordance with the time frames and other restrictions set forth in the Internal Revenue Code.
– Require that there be adequate planning before soliciting bids for construction contracts.
– Ensure that the ongoing school construction projects be completed as quickly as possible.
– Discontinue charging the costs of non-PFA services to the authority's operating budget.
– Obtain supporting documents for payments totaling $367,000 made to a contractor; or, failing this, consider asking the Attorney General's Office to initiate legal action for recovery of the money.
– Require that professional service contracts be awarded on the basis of competitive bids.
– Collect $571,000 due on loans to private entities and $706,000 due as reimbursement for expenses paid on behalf of the government of the Virgin Islands.
In a cover letter to Gov. Charles W. Turnbull dated Oct. 1, Arnold Van Beverhoudt, regional audit manager for the Office of Inspector General, set a deadline of Oct. 16 for the administration to respond to the draft report. The protocol is for the government's response to the draft report to be included in the final report. Turnbull reportedly submitted his response on Friday.
According to the draft document, efforts were made between July 10 and Aug. 13 by the Office of Inspector General to meet with Mapp, the authority's director of finance and administration, to discuss the audit findings, but these proved unsuccessful.
The document states that a preliminary draft was delivered to Mapp on July 10, and "after several followup requests," a meeting was scheduled for Aug. 6, when Mapp "stated that he was not prepared to discuss the report and requested an extension." A second meeting was scheduled for Aug. 13, but "shortly prior to the scheduled meeting time," the report states, "we received a fax from the director indicating that he was still not fully prepared to discuss the report. Therefore, we are issuing this formal draft report without benefit of an exit conference."
Following accounts of the contents of the draft published in The Avis and reported on the radio Tuesday, Mapp took to the airwaves in the afternoon to denounce the document as "fatally flawed and severely lacking in professional quality." Speaking on WVWI Radio, he said there was "no factual evidence" for the audit findings concerning school construction overruns, and that what overruns there have been "come nowhere close to $17 million."
He also sought to discredit the input of Francis cited repeatedly in the report. His predecessor, Mapp said, "did not leave the PFA under friendly circumstances … How objective can an audit report be that you take a terminated employee, and use that terminated employee to draft your report?"
And he suggested that Van Beverhoudt was the person who leaked the report to the news media. This prompted a response on air from the regional audit manager terming Mapp's comments "just a smokescreen to deflect attention away" from the substantive findings of the audit. Van Beverhoudt said it was "totally ridiculous to charge that I or any member of my staff leaked the report," and that anyone in his office who did so would risk losing their jobs. Noting that he is just a few years away from retirement, he added, "I'd be very stupid do something like that and jeopardize my benefits."
Francis, reached by telephone at his home in Puerto Rico Tuesday night, said of Mapp, "I think it's very unfortunate of him to characterize my service to the Virgin Islands in that way, but I guess we're all entitled to our own opinions." He confirmed that he, too, had received a copy of the preliminary draft in July for comment, and "I virtually accepted it verbatim."
Noting that he has been "silent on the reason for my leaving, my being left" by Turnbull, who fired him last December, Francis added, "I'm not going to get involved in the campaign … When the report comes out — and I hope it comes out before the election — it will speak for itself."
This was the first federal audit performed on the PFA, although in 1994 the Office of Inspector General issued a report on the bonded debt of the V.I. government and its autonomous agencies.
Bond proceeds unused for years
The audit found that bond proceeds of $27.6 million remained unused for up to 8½ years, although the Internal Revenue Code requires that any such proceeds be reprogrammed within three years in order to retain tax-exempt status. In April 1998, the Legislature approved reprogramming of money for various capital improvement projects comprising bond proceeds of:
– $7.7 million from $29.2 million in Highway Revenue Bonds (Transportation Trust Fund) Series 1989, unused for 8½ years.
– $3.5 million from $28.8 million in Special Tax Bonds (General Obligation Matching Fund/Hugo Insurance Claims Fund Program) Series 1991, unused for 7 years.
– $16.4 million from $215.1 million in Revenue Refunding Bonds (V.I. Government General Obligation/Matching Fund Loan Notes) Series 1992A, unused for 6 years.
As of September 2001, the draft audit report states, $7.3 million of the $27.6 million remained unused. After reviewing 16 public projects, "we determined that the agencies responsible for the projects had not made the effort to use all of the funds or, in some cases, did not intend to use the funds," the report states.
It notes that Francis stated in his Dec. 27, 2001, annual report to the governor that the PFA was "in gross violation of the terms" of the bond indentures and the IRS regulations.
The report states that the Legislature (in 1999) reprogrammed $1.1 million for final payment on th e purchase of the Michelle Motel for use a long-term mental health care facility, and another $1.2 million to renovate the structure. However, after the government bought the building and paid $100,000 for architectural plans, the commissioner of Health told the PFA that it was not suitable for the intended use. The $1.1 million and the $100,000 "were wasted," the report states.
(This should not be confused with the case of a mental health facility on St. Croix in which the government is accused of having misspent some $870,700 on a project that was pursued outside of standard procedures and ultimately scrapped, in what the Office of Inspector General called "a case study on the inefficiencies and waste of public funds." See "$1 million squandered on clinic that never was".)
Of about $2 million in bond proceeds appropriated for capital improvements, the audit found, some $750,000 was spent inappropriately. Francis "voiced his concerns that improper payments were being made from the bond funds," the report says, but "reluctantly approved legislative expenditures totaling over $608,000" while noting that "only about 7.5 percent of these monies are utilized for what might properly be deemed capital expenses."
According to the Internal Revenue Code, money paid for "incidental repairs and maintenance of property" is not a capital expenditure. Nor, the report says, were PFA payments of $52,000 for voting machines, $41,000 for speakers and $19,000 for the painting of a mural.
School rebuilding overruns and delays
The PFA issued $541.8 million in Series 1998E bonds, of which $40.2 million was earmarked for the reconstruction of three schools demolished by Hurricane Marilyn — $9.2 million for Peace Corps Elementary, $10.5 million for Lockhart Elementary and $20.5 million for Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School. According to the audit:
– Peace Corps had cost overruns of $3.1 million with the potential for more than $408,000 more for work performed under two pending change orders, and completion was delayed 376 days.
– Lockhart had cost overruns of $1.9 million with the potential for $535,000 more, and completion was delayed 331 days.
– BCB could have cost overruns of $8.7 million by the time the school is completed, and completion had been delayed 607 days as of July — or some 900 days to date.
Bidding and construction work began before architectural plans were completed, the audit found, and while the contracts let were below estimate, they did not include such work as removal of existing modular classrooms, installation of air conditioning, paving of access roads and parking lots and, in the case of BCB, construction of a gymnasium and additional classrooms. Also, the audit found, contracts lacked guaranteed maximum price provisions.
Inappropriate spending for services
In the area of professional service contracts, the audit found that in at least six instances, the PFA awarded contracts on a non-competitive basis for a total amount of $8.2 million. The draft report says the government paid:
– First Union Capital Markets $1.7 million from January 1999 through October 2001; according to the report, $450,000 was inappropriately spent, including for Organic Act revisions, obtaining federal grants and forgiveness of Federal Emergency Management Agency loans, discussion of V.I. government Fiscal Year 2001 and 2002 budget preparations, analysis of the cost of implementing step increases for unionized workers, analysis of salary proposals for teachers, analyses of retirement plans, collection of delinquent property taxes, and researching possible privatization of the V.I. public transit system and contracting out of the administration of the Workers' Compensation program.
– Harris, Beach and Wilcox $950,000 for bond counsel services between January 1999 and December 2001; the audit found that $42,000 was inappropriately spent, including for conferences with a private individual regarding the V.I. Hotel, "review of legislation related to a local communications firm," conferences regarding government payroll and deficits, conferences regarding hospital privatization and meetings regarding a mortgage foreclosure.
– Winston and Strawn $2.3 million, $1.8 million of it from the PFA's operating budget, for legal and government relations services from January 1999 through August 2001. The audit determined that $70,000 of the $1.8 million paid was for work related to the PFA, mainly in the area of rum tax issues, and the rest "related to functions of the Office of the Governor" — dealing with matters involving FEMA, debt to the Bureau of Prisons, and the memorandum of understanding between the government and the U.S. Interior Department — that should have been paid from that office's budget.
– Buchanan Ingersoll Professional Corp. $250,000 for bond counsel services between May 2000 and November 2001; the audit found that $86,000 was for work unrelated to the PFA, addressing such things as government employee stipends, teacher salaries, budget issues, a memorandum of understanding with Hovensa, government bankruptcy issues, problems in the Attorney General's Office and prospective investors on St. Croix.
– Johnston and Associates $367,000 for consultation services from February 1997 through January 1999 relating to the soliciting of Asian investors, the development of transshipment ports on St. Croix and the development of PFA economic strategies to benefit the territory. No documentation was provided for the work done, the report states; invoices submitted "only stated the time periods for which services were being billed." The contractor was a former U.S. senator, the report states, and when Francis objected to the lack of documentation, "authorizations for payment under this contract were made by the then-governor," Roy L. Schneider.
The draft report also questions a smattering of "small stuff" expenditures — such as airfare of $2,460 for an Office of the Governor employee "to attend a New York holiday party and meetings regarding 'various new transactions,'" $6,000 in cell phone charges submitted by Union Capital Markets over six months, and $1,738 "on behalf of a private individual who traveled to Norway."
Non-competitive award of contracts
Through 1998, "it was standard practice for the authority to award contracts competitively," the report states. But over the audit period, contracts totaling almost $8.2 million were awarded non-competitively, including those for financial advisers and bond counsel executed in January 2001 and approved by the PFA board retroactively a month later.
Francis noted in a memorandum to a Government House official that the PFA is not required to go through the competitive procurement process, but this "has been deemed a highly desirable procedure." He added regarding the non-competitive awarding of contracts, "I do not believe this is a healthy course to follow."
Loans unenforced and uncollected
The PFA has the authority to lend bond proceeds to private enterprises and did so in four cases over the audit period. It did not enforce the reimbursement of two such loans and failed to collect interest and credit enhancement fees totaling $571,000 "and was not reimbursed for $706,000 incurred on behalf of the government," the draft report states.
– In August 2000, the authority entered into a loan guarantee agreement with three companies to redevelop the old Yacht Haven Hotel and Marina. The developer, PRM Realty Group, entered into a $13 million financing arrangement with a lending institution with the PFA providing a limited guarantee cash deposit of $5 million. The developer agreed to pay interest quarterly to the authority according to a formula that guaranteed the PFA overall earnings of 10 percent including interest from the money-market account in which the $5 million was held.
As of March 2002, the report states, the developer owed the PFA $496,000 in interest but the authority had made no effort to collect it. More money may have been due from the money-market account, but the auditors were unable to obtain information needed to verify this. The authority also did not receive a $75,000 credit enhancement fee for 2001, bringing the total amount owed as of last Dec. 31 to $571,000.
– In February 1998, the PFA entered into a contract with PriceWaterhouse on behalf of the Office of the Governor for services pertaining to the possible sale of the Water and Power Authority. By July 1998, the authority had paid the accounting firm $515,000 out of designated loan funds from a 1989 bond issue.
The PFA board eventually authorized payment of $545,000 more, out of the authority's operating budget, then in August 2001 agreed to accept payment of $275,000 and a credit of $85,000 from the government, leaving the initial $515,000 plus another $191,000 still owed. Therefore, the draft audit report states, "the authority should seek reimbursement from the government for a total of $706,000."
Who makes up the PFA
The PFA was created as part of the Government Capital Improvement Act of 1988 as an autonomous instrumentality. The authority is mandated to assist the government in raising capital for essential public projects through bond issuance, investments and loans.
The PFA is governed by a five-member board consisting of the sitting governor as chair, the commissioner of Finance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and two private-sector representatives (required to be knowledgeable about "municipal" finance) who are appointed by governor and confirmed by the Legislature. The board consists at present of Gov. Turnbull, Bernice Turnbull, Ira Mills, St. Thomas accountant Roy D. Jackson and St. Croix businessman Paul Arnold.
Francis, an economist, served as the authority's director of administration and finance from January 1995 until last Dec. 31. He was fired in early December by Gov. Turnbull, who gave no reason for terminating his contract. Informed sources said at the time that the termination was not cordial and had to with Francis's refusal to approve a large payment to a government vendor.
On Jan. 30, the Legislature voted to award Francis the V.I. Medal of Honor and on Feb. 28, the PFA board voted to bring Francis back as a "transitory adviser" to what was then expected to be two persons who would assume his duties, as the board had decided to hire separate directors of finance and of administration.
Francis, however, never signed the offered contract, and on March 22, Gov. Turnbull announced that he had approved the contracting of former senator and lieutenant governor Kenneth Mapp to hold both positions, as Francis had done. Neither Jackson nor Arnold were at the board meeting where the hiring was approved.
Mapp's appointment had been widely rumored, although it was expected that he would get only one of the two jobs. In November 2001, he announced his candidacy for governor in the November 2002 election; although he is a Republican, he was expected to run as an independent. On Feb. 9, he announced that he had dropped out of the race. He gave no indication of whom he would support for the November election.
The draft audit report notes that the recommended changes in policies and procedures to bring the territory into conformity with federal regulations "would have to be strictly enforced by the governor, in his capacity as chairman of the authority's board of directors, in order to be effective."
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
ONLINE NEWSPAPERS: 'THERE'S NO TURNING BACK'
Oct. 22, 2002 – The Online Newspaper Association has more than 900 members, and nearly 200 of them made it to the organization's third annual conference and awards presentation in New York City on Friday and Saturday.
Keynote speaker Merrill Brown, senior vice president of RealOne Services and former editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com, the online news service that he helped launch in 1996, called the Internet the "fastest-growing medium in history." And with access in half of U.S. households after just eight years in existence, he said, "there’s no turning back."
Perhaps more important for the journalists who made up most of his listeners, Brown added, "The need for our services has never been so profound." A growing audience expects Internet news coverage to be "instant, intense and, yes, stable," he said. "What we do today is vital from a journalism point of view, a business point of view and a community service point of view."
Brown called the Internet "the most important news medium of our time … using new storytelling techniques … and without distribution barriers."
Buzzwords at the conference included "convergence" (the coming together online of print, audio and visual mediums) and "commoditization" (casting the news as a marketable process and product). Another "C" word, "credibility," got a lot of attention, too, with the consensus at a panel on convergence journalism education being that Internet users "are not getting a lot of protein" in their online news diet.
There was much discussion of narrative vs. linear journalistic storytelling, of the integration of visual images with text, of the communication evolution from interpersonal (one to one) to mass (one to many) to interactive (many to many).
A hot topic among publications with both print and Internet editions was the sometimes adversarial relationship between the two. In response to a comment that online publications are often treated like stepchildren, Anthony Moor, new media editor for the Gannett chain's Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle, said, "In 10 years, the children will likely be taking care of the parents."
St. Thomas Source was one of four small, independent Internet publications nominated for General Excellence in Online Journalism, as a medium "that successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the unique abilities of the Web and represents the highest journalistic standards." Judging was of "excellence of content, interactivity, multimedia, design, navigation and community tools." First place in the category went to a news site about Benicia, California, that emphasizes interactivity with site visitors, inviting feedback to stories and publishing viewer comments at the end of news reports.
V.I. Source founder/publisher Shaun A. Pennington said, "Probably the biggest single reality check I got at the conference is that there aren't that many people doing what we are doing — running an exclusively online daily newspaper."
According to Bruce Koon, ONA president and executive news editor at Knight Ridder Digital, there will be more and more of them — and soon. "There were only a few represented this year at the conference," he said, "and as far as I know, there are only a few out there. They are the first wave. By next year's conference I expect to see more."
Koon acknowledged the financial struggles faced by the frontrunners in this new field, but said, "You just have to hang in there. It is the future of news."
The economic challenges for online publications, from small independents to affiliates of the major networks and newspaper chains, was a topic touched upon often at the conference. Many speakers talked of staff reductions and other cost-cutting measures their publications had been forced to make.
GothamGazette.com, an award finalist in the same category as the Source, is a not-for-profit enterprise supported in part by funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Participants on a panel looking at paid content agreed that the subscription-based model hasn't worked and would not work for most online newspapers. However, a recent article in Editor & Publisher by the news director of the Albuquerque Journal's Web site, which went to paid access a year ago, told a different story.
Peter Krasilovsky, vice president of Borrell Associates, noted that New Mexico is an isolated area served by no other major local online news media. Another selling point is great interest in the area (including Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Los Alamos) from outside, from a tourism perspective.
Albuquerque is not unlike the Virgin Islands in these regards, Pennington noted. A significant difference, however, is that the Albuquerque online paper is an affiliate of an established print product, while the Source newspapers have no print counterpart.
There are no plans for the Source to go to paid subscriptions, Pennington said, "but there are other revenue streams that do work." One is SourceDirect, the headline and quote-of-the-day e-mail service that was launched on April 1 and has some 200 subscribers. The service "is one of the offerings that many suggested as revenue-producing possibilities" at the conference, she said.
In a panel on Web site design, Dixon Rohr, a consultant to AOL Time Warner and IBM, said online newspaper users want "the focus on storytelling, without the need to focus on functionality — it's just there." Moor, on a panel discussing convergence, said, "It's about the reporting — in the form and at the time people want it, leveraging reporters in the places where they can be most useful to audiences."
Claude Albert, a multimedia editor at the Hartford Courant, said the challenge to those charged with developing online news services is to "make the technology work for you, focus on what matters most, and change the newsroom mindset while serving the values that journalism embraces."
First-place award winners
The 2002 ONA award winners:
General Excellence, under 200,000 visitors: Independent — BeniciaNews.com of Benicia, California. Affiliated — PBS.org/Frontline-World.
General Excellence, over 200,000 visitors: Independent — CNET News.com, a technology news site. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com.
Breaking News: Independent — CNET News.com, for coverage of the end of Excite broadband service. Affiliated — CNN.com, for Sept. 11 coverage.
Enterprise Journalism: Independent — CNET News.com, for a look at loopholes in online banking. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com, for investigating the police department with the nation's highest rate of shooting suspects.
Service Journalism: Independent — GothamGazette.com, for ideas on rebuilding New York after Sept. 11. Affiliated — ChicagoTribune.com, for its "report card" on the region's schools.
Feature Journalism: Independent — DigitalJournalist, for a multimedia project collecting photojournalism images (13.4 million so far) of Sept. 11. Affiliated — CSMonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor), for its look at Amtrak and the future of rail travel in America.
Creative Use of Medium: Independent — Slate, for an explanation of the Enron story. Affiliated — MSNBC.com, for a national report on airport security.
Commentary (one division): Mark Fiore, MarkFiore.com.
For more information on the conference and the award nominees and recipients, visit the Online News Association Web site.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click her e.
Keynote speaker Merrill Brown, senior vice president of RealOne Services and former editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com, the online news service that he helped launch in 1996, called the Internet the "fastest-growing medium in history." And with access in half of U.S. households after just eight years in existence, he said, "there’s no turning back."
Perhaps more important for the journalists who made up most of his listeners, Brown added, "The need for our services has never been so profound." A growing audience expects Internet news coverage to be "instant, intense and, yes, stable," he said. "What we do today is vital from a journalism point of view, a business point of view and a community service point of view."
Brown called the Internet "the most important news medium of our time … using new storytelling techniques … and without distribution barriers."
Buzzwords at the conference included "convergence" (the coming together online of print, audio and visual mediums) and "commoditization" (casting the news as a marketable process and product). Another "C" word, "credibility," got a lot of attention, too, with the consensus at a panel on convergence journalism education being that Internet users "are not getting a lot of protein" in their online news diet.
There was much discussion of narrative vs. linear journalistic storytelling, of the integration of visual images with text, of the communication evolution from interpersonal (one to one) to mass (one to many) to interactive (many to many).
A hot topic among publications with both print and Internet editions was the sometimes adversarial relationship between the two. In response to a comment that online publications are often treated like stepchildren, Anthony Moor, new media editor for the Gannett chain's Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle, said, "In 10 years, the children will likely be taking care of the parents."
St. Thomas Source was one of four small, independent Internet publications nominated for General Excellence in Online Journalism, as a medium "that successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the unique abilities of the Web and represents the highest journalistic standards." Judging was of "excellence of content, interactivity, multimedia, design, navigation and community tools." First place in the category went to a news site about Benicia, California, that emphasizes interactivity with site visitors, inviting feedback to stories and publishing viewer comments at the end of news reports.
V.I. Source founder/publisher Shaun A. Pennington said, "Probably the biggest single reality check I got at the conference is that there aren't that many people doing what we are doing — running an exclusively online daily newspaper."
According to Bruce Koon, ONA president and executive news editor at Knight Ridder Digital, there will be more and more of them — and soon. "There were only a few represented this year at the conference," he said, "and as far as I know, there are only a few out there. They are the first wave. By next year's conference I expect to see more."
Koon acknowledged the financial struggles faced by the frontrunners in this new field, but said, "You just have to hang in there. It is the future of news."
The economic challenges for online publications, from small independents to affiliates of the major networks and newspaper chains, was a topic touched upon often at the conference. Many speakers talked of staff reductions and other cost-cutting measures their publications had been forced to make.
GothamGazette.com, an award finalist in the same category as the Source, is a not-for-profit enterprise supported in part by funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Participants on a panel looking at paid content agreed that the subscription-based model hasn't worked and would not work for most online newspapers. However, a recent article in Editor & Publisher by the news director of the Albuquerque Journal's Web site, which went to paid access a year ago, told a different story.
Peter Krasilovsky, vice president of Borrell Associates, noted that New Mexico is an isolated area served by no other major local online news media. Another selling point is great interest in the area (including Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Los Alamos) from outside, from a tourism perspective.
Albuquerque is not unlike the Virgin Islands in these regards, Pennington noted. A significant difference, however, is that the Albuquerque online paper is an affiliate of an established print product, while the Source newspapers have no print counterpart.
There are no plans for the Source to go to paid subscriptions, Pennington said, "but there are other revenue streams that do work." One is SourceDirect, the headline and quote-of-the-day e-mail service that was launched on April 1 and has some 200 subscribers. The service "is one of the offerings that many suggested as revenue-producing possibilities" at the conference, she said.
In a panel on Web site design, Dixon Rohr, a consultant to AOL Time Warner and IBM, said online newspaper users want "the focus on storytelling, without the need to focus on functionality — it's just there." Moor, on a panel discussing convergence, said, "It's about the reporting — in the form and at the time people want it, leveraging reporters in the places where they can be most useful to audiences."
Claude Albert, a multimedia editor at the Hartford Courant, said the challenge to those charged with developing online news services is to "make the technology work for you, focus on what matters most, and change the newsroom mindset while serving the values that journalism embraces."
First-place award winners
The 2002 ONA award winners:
General Excellence, under 200,000 visitors: Independent — BeniciaNews.com of Benicia, California. Affiliated — PBS.org/Frontline-World.
General Excellence, over 200,000 visitors: Independent — CNET News.com, a technology news site. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com.
Breaking News: Independent — CNET News.com, for coverage of the end of Excite broadband service. Affiliated — CNN.com, for Sept. 11 coverage.
Enterprise Journalism: Independent — CNET News.com, for a look at loopholes in online banking. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com, for investigating the police department with the nation's highest rate of shooting suspects.
Service Journalism: Independent — GothamGazette.com, for ideas on rebuilding New York after Sept. 11. Affiliated — ChicagoTribune.com, for its "report card" on the region's schools.
Feature Journalism: Independent — DigitalJournalist, for a multimedia project collecting photojournalism images (13.4 million so far) of Sept. 11. Affiliated — CSMonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor), for its look at Amtrak and the future of rail travel in America.
Creative Use of Medium: Independent — Slate, for an explanation of the Enron story. Affiliated — MSNBC.com, for a national report on airport security.
Commentary (one division): Mark Fiore, MarkFiore.com.
For more information on the conference and the award nominees and recipients, visit the Online News Association Web site.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click her e.
ONLINE NEWSPAPERS: 'THERE'S NO TURNING BACK'
Oct. 22, 2002 – The Online Newspaper Association has more than 900 members, and nearly 200 of them made it to the organization's third annual conference and awards presentation in New York City on Friday and Saturday.
Keynote speaker Merrill Brown, senior vice president of RealOne Services and former editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com, the online news service that he helped launch in 1996, called the Internet the "fastest-growing medium in history." And with access in half of U.S. households after just eight years in existence, he said, "there’s no turning back."
Perhaps more important for the journalists who made up most of his listeners, Brown added, "The need for our services has never been so profound." A growing audience expects Internet news coverage to be "instant, intense and, yes, stable," he said. "What we do today is vital from a journalism point of view, a business point of view and a community service point of view."
Brown called the Internet "the most important news medium of our time … using new storytelling techniques … and without distribution barriers."
Buzzwords at the conference included "convergence" (the coming together online of print, audio and visual mediums) and "commoditization" (casting the news as a marketable process and product). Another "C" word, "credibility," got a lot of attention, too, with the consensus at a panel on convergence journalism education being that Internet users "are not getting a lot of protein" in their online news diet.
There was much discussion of narrative vs. linear journalistic storytelling, of the integration of visual images with text, of the communication evolution from interpersonal (one to one) to mass (one to many) to interactive (many to many).
A hot topic among publications with both print and Internet editions was the sometimes adversarial relationship between the two. In response to a comment that online publications are often treated like stepchildren, Anthony Moor, new media editor for the Gannett chain's Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle, said, "In 10 years, the children will likely be taking care of the parents."
St. Thomas Source was one of four small, independent Internet publications nominated for General Excellence in Online Journalism, as a medium "that successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the unique abilities of the Web and represents the highest journalistic standards." Judging was of "excellence of content, interactivity, multimedia, design, navigation and community tools." First place in the category went to a news site about Benicia, California, that emphasizes interactivity with site visitors, inviting feedback to stories and publishing viewer comments at the end of news reports.
V.I. Source founder/publisher Shaun A. Pennington said, "Probably the biggest single reality check I got at the conference is that there aren't that many people doing what we are doing — running an exclusively online daily newspaper."
According to Bruce Koon, ONA president and executive news editor at Knight Ridder Digital, there will be more and more of them — and soon. "There were only a few represented this year at the conference," he said, "and as far as I know, there are only a few out there. They are the first wave. By next year's conference I expect to see more."
Koon acknowledged the financial struggles faced by the frontrunners in this new field, but said, "You just have to hang in there. It is the future of news."
The economic challenges for online publications, from small independents to affiliates of the major networks and newspaper chains, was a topic touched upon often at the conference. Many speakers talked of staff reductions and other cost-cutting measures their publications had been forced to make.
GothamGazette.com, an award finalist in the same category as the Source, is a not-for-profit enterprise supported in part by funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Participants on a panel looking at paid content agreed that the subscription-based model hasn't worked and would not work for most online newspapers. However, a recent article in Editor & Publisher by the news director of the Albuquerque Journal's Web site, which went to paid access a year ago, told a different story.
Peter Krasilovsky, vice president of Borrell Associates, noted that New Mexico is an isolated area served by no other major local online news media. Another selling point is great interest in the area (including Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Los Alamos) from outside, from a tourism perspective.
Albuquerque is not unlike the Virgin Islands in these regards, Pennington noted. A significant difference, however, is that the Albuquerque online paper is an affiliate of an established print product, while the Source newspapers have no print counterpart.
There are no plans for the Source to go to paid subscriptions, Pennington said, "but there are other revenue streams that do work." One is SourceDirect, the headline and quote-of-the-day e-mail service that was launched on April 1 and has some 200 subscribers. The service "is one of the offerings that many suggested as revenue-producing possibilities" at the conference, she said.
In a panel on Web site design, Dixon Rohr, a consultant to AOL Time Warner and IBM, said online newspaper users want "the focus on storytelling, without the need to focus on functionality — it's just there." Moor, on a panel discussing convergence, said, "It's about the reporting — in the form and at the time people want it, leveraging reporters in the places where they can be most useful to audiences."
Claude Albert, a multimedia editor at the Hartford Courant, said the challenge to those charged with developing online news services is to "make the technology work for you, focus on what matters most, and change the newsroom mindset while serving the values that journalism embraces."
First-place award winners
The 2002 ONA award winners:
General Excellence, under 200,000 visitors: Independent — BeniciaNews.com of Benicia, California. Affiliated — PBS.org/Frontline-World.
General Excellence, over 200,000 visitors: Independent — CNET News.com, a technology news site. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com.
Breaking News: Independent — CNET News.com, for coverage of the end of Excite broadband service. Affiliated — CNN.com, for Sept. 11 coverage.
Enterprise Journalism: Independent — CNET News.com, for a look at loopholes in online banking. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com, for investigating the police department with the nation's highest rate of shooting suspects.
Service Journalism: Independent — GothamGazette.com, for ideas on rebuilding New York after Sept. 11. Affiliated — ChicagoTribune.com, for its "report card" on the region's schools.
Feature Journalism: Independent — DigitalJournalist, for a multimedia project collecting photojournalism images (13.4 million so far) of Sept. 11. Affiliated — CSMonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor), for its look at Amtrak and the future of rail travel in America.
Creative Use of Medium: Independent — Slate, for an explanation of the Enron story. Affiliated — MSNBC.com, for a national report on airport security.
Commentary (one division): Mark Fiore, MarkFiore.com.
For more information on the conference and the award nominees and recipients, visit the Online News Association Web site.
Publisher's note : Like the St. John Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
Keynote speaker Merrill Brown, senior vice president of RealOne Services and former editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com, the online news service that he helped launch in 1996, called the Internet the "fastest-growing medium in history." And with access in half of U.S. households after just eight years in existence, he said, "there’s no turning back."
Perhaps more important for the journalists who made up most of his listeners, Brown added, "The need for our services has never been so profound." A growing audience expects Internet news coverage to be "instant, intense and, yes, stable," he said. "What we do today is vital from a journalism point of view, a business point of view and a community service point of view."
Brown called the Internet "the most important news medium of our time … using new storytelling techniques … and without distribution barriers."
Buzzwords at the conference included "convergence" (the coming together online of print, audio and visual mediums) and "commoditization" (casting the news as a marketable process and product). Another "C" word, "credibility," got a lot of attention, too, with the consensus at a panel on convergence journalism education being that Internet users "are not getting a lot of protein" in their online news diet.
There was much discussion of narrative vs. linear journalistic storytelling, of the integration of visual images with text, of the communication evolution from interpersonal (one to one) to mass (one to many) to interactive (many to many).
A hot topic among publications with both print and Internet editions was the sometimes adversarial relationship between the two. In response to a comment that online publications are often treated like stepchildren, Anthony Moor, new media editor for the Gannett chain's Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle, said, "In 10 years, the children will likely be taking care of the parents."
St. Thomas Source was one of four small, independent Internet publications nominated for General Excellence in Online Journalism, as a medium "that successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the unique abilities of the Web and represents the highest journalistic standards." Judging was of "excellence of content, interactivity, multimedia, design, navigation and community tools." First place in the category went to a news site about Benicia, California, that emphasizes interactivity with site visitors, inviting feedback to stories and publishing viewer comments at the end of news reports.
V.I. Source founder/publisher Shaun A. Pennington said, "Probably the biggest single reality check I got at the conference is that there aren't that many people doing what we are doing — running an exclusively online daily newspaper."
According to Bruce Koon, ONA president and executive news editor at Knight Ridder Digital, there will be more and more of them — and soon. "There were only a few represented this year at the conference," he said, "and as far as I know, there are only a few out there. They are the first wave. By next year's conference I expect to see more."
Koon acknowledged the financial struggles faced by the frontrunners in this new field, but said, "You just have to hang in there. It is the future of news."
The economic challenges for online publications, from small independents to affiliates of the major networks and newspaper chains, was a topic touched upon often at the conference. Many speakers talked of staff reductions and other cost-cutting measures their publications had been forced to make.
GothamGazette.com, an award finalist in the same category as the Source, is a not-for-profit enterprise supported in part by funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Participants on a panel looking at paid content agreed that the subscription-based model hasn't worked and would not work for most online newspapers. However, a recent article in Editor & Publisher by the news director of the Albuquerque Journal's Web site, which went to paid access a year ago, told a different story.
Peter Krasilovsky, vice president of Borrell Associates, noted that New Mexico is an isolated area served by no other major local online news media. Another selling point is great interest in the area (including Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Los Alamos) from outside, from a tourism perspective.
Albuquerque is not unlike the Virgin Islands in these regards, Pennington noted. A significant difference, however, is that the Albuquerque online paper is an affiliate of an established print product, while the Source newspapers have no print counterpart.
There are no plans for the Source to go to paid subscriptions, Pennington said, "but there are other revenue streams that do work." One is SourceDirect, the headline and quote-of-the-day e-mail service that was launched on April 1 and has some 200 subscribers. The service "is one of the offerings that many suggested as revenue-producing possibilities" at the conference, she said.
In a panel on Web site design, Dixon Rohr, a consultant to AOL Time Warner and IBM, said online newspaper users want "the focus on storytelling, without the need to focus on functionality — it's just there." Moor, on a panel discussing convergence, said, "It's about the reporting — in the form and at the time people want it, leveraging reporters in the places where they can be most useful to audiences."
Claude Albert, a multimedia editor at the Hartford Courant, said the challenge to those charged with developing online news services is to "make the technology work for you, focus on what matters most, and change the newsroom mindset while serving the values that journalism embraces."
First-place award winners
The 2002 ONA award winners:
General Excellence, under 200,000 visitors: Independent — BeniciaNews.com of Benicia, California. Affiliated — PBS.org/Frontline-World.
General Excellence, over 200,000 visitors: Independent — CNET News.com, a technology news site. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com.
Breaking News: Independent — CNET News.com, for coverage of the end of Excite broadband service. Affiliated — CNN.com, for Sept. 11 coverage.
Enterprise Journalism: Independent — CNET News.com, for a look at loopholes in online banking. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com, for investigating the police department with the nation's highest rate of shooting suspects.
Service Journalism: Independent — GothamGazette.com, for ideas on rebuilding New York after Sept. 11. Affiliated — ChicagoTribune.com, for its "report card" on the region's schools.
Feature Journalism: Independent — DigitalJournalist, for a multimedia project collecting photojournalism images (13.4 million so far) of Sept. 11. Affiliated — CSMonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor), for its look at Amtrak and the future of rail travel in America.
Creative Use of Medium: Independent — Slate, for an explanation of the Enron story. Affiliated — MSNBC.com, for a national report on airport security.
Commentary (one division): Mark Fiore, MarkFiore.com.
For more information on the conference and the award nominees and recipients, visit the Online News Association Web site.
Publisher's note : Like the St. John Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
ONLINE NEWSPAPERS: 'THERE'S NO TURNING BACK'
Oct. 22, 2002 – The Online Newspaper Association has more than 900 members, and nearly 200 of them made it to the organization's third annual conference and awards presentation in New York City on Friday and Saturday.
Keynote speaker Merrill Brown, senior vice president of RealOne Services and former editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com, the online news service that he helped launch in 1996, called the Internet the "fastest-growing medium in history." And with access in half of U.S. households after just eight years in existence, he said, "there’s no turning back."
Perhaps more important for the journalists who made up most of his listeners, Brown added, "The need for our services has never been so profound." A growing audience expects Internet news coverage to be "instant, intense and, yes, stable," he said. "What we do today is vital from a journalism point of view, a business point of view and a community service point of view."
Brown called the Internet "the most important news medium of our time … using new storytelling techniques … and without distribution barriers."
Buzzwords at the conference included "convergence" (the coming together online of print, audio and visual mediums) and "commoditization" (casting the news as a marketable process and product). Another "C" word, "credibility," got a lot of attention, too, with the consensus at a panel on convergence journalism education being that Internet users "are not getting a lot of protein" in their online news diet.
There was much discussion of narrative vs. linear journalistic storytelling, of the integration of visual images with text, of the communication evolution from interpersonal (one to one) to mass (one to many) to interactive (many to many).
A hot topic among publications with both print and Internet editions was the sometimes adversarial relationship between the two. In response to a comment that online publications are often treated like stepchildren, Anthony Moor, new media editor for the Gannett chain's Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle, said, "In 10 years, the children will likely be taking care of the parents."
St. Thomas Source was one of four small, independent Internet publications nominated for General Excellence in Online Journalism, as a medium "that successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the unique abilities of the Web and represents the highest journalistic standards." Judging was of "excellence of content, interactivity, multimedia, design, navigation and community tools." First place in the category went to a news site about Benicia, California, that emphasizes interactivity with site visitors, inviting feedback to stories and publishing viewer comments at the end of news reports.
V.I. Source founder/publisher Shaun A. Pennington said, "Probably the biggest single reality check I got at the conference is that there aren't that many people doing what we are doing — running an exclusively online daily newspaper."
According to Bruce Koon, ONA president and executive news editor at Knight Ridder Digital, there will be more and more of them — and soon. "There were only a few represented this year at the conference," he said, "and as far as I know, there are only a few out there. They are the first wave. By next year's conference I expect to see more."
Koon acknowledged the financial struggles faced by the frontrunners in this new field, but said, "You just have to hang in there. It is the future of news."
The economic challenges for online publications, from small independents to affiliates of the major networks and newspaper chains, was a topic touched upon often at the conference. Many speakers talked of staff reductions and other cost-cutting measures their publications had been forced to make.
GothamGazette.com, an award finalist in the same category as the Source, is a not-for-profit enterprise supported in part by funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Participants on a panel looking at paid content agreed that the subscription-based model hasn't worked and would not work for most online newspapers. However, a recent article in Editor & Publisher by the news director of the Albuquerque Journal's Web site, which went to paid access a year ago, told a different story.
Peter Krasilovsky, vice president of Borrell Associates, noted that New Mexico is an isolated area served by no other major local online news media. Another selling point is great interest in the area (including Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Los Alamos) from outside, from a tourism perspective.
Albuquerque is not unlike the Virgin Islands in these regards, Pennington noted. A significant difference, however, is that the Albuquerque online paper is an affiliate of an established print product, while the Source newspapers have no print counterpart.
There are no plans for the Source to go to paid subscriptions, Pennington said, "but there are other revenue streams that do work." One is SourceDirect, the headline and quote-of-the-day e-mail service that was launched on April 1 and has some 200 subscribers. The service "is one of the offerings that many suggested as revenue-producing possibilities" at the conference, she said.
In a panel on Web site design, Dixon Rohr, a consultant to AOL Time Warner and IBM, said online newspaper users want "the focus on storytelling, without the need to focus on functionality — it's just there." Moor, on a panel discussing convergence, said, "It's about the reporting — in the form and at the time people want it, leveraging reporters in the places where they can be most useful to audiences."
Claude Albert, a multimedia editor at the Hartford Courant, said the challenge to those charged with developing online news services is to "make the technology work for you, focus on what matters most, and change the newsroom mindset while serving the values that journalism embraces."
Representing the Source at the conference were Pennington, senior news editor Jean Etsinger and reporter Molly Morris.
First-place award winners
The 2002 ONA award winners:
General Excellence, under 200,000 visitors: Independent — BeniciaNews.com of Benicia, California. Affiliated — PBS.org/Frontline-World.
General Excellence, over 200,000 visitors: Independent — CNET News.com, a technology news site. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com.
Breaking News: Independent — CNET News.com, for coverage of the end of Excite broadband service. Affiliated — CNN.com, for Sept. 11 coverage.
Enterprise Journalism: Independent — CNET News.com, for a look at loopholes in online banking. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com, for investigating the police department with the nation's highest rate of shooting suspects.
Service Journalism: Independent — GothamGazette.com, for ideas on rebuilding New York after Sept. 11. Affiliated — ChicagoTribune.com, for its "report card" on the region's schools.
Feature Journalism: Independent — DigitalJournalist, for a multimedia project collecting photojournalism images (13.4 million so far) of Sept. 11. Affiliated — CSMonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor), for its look at Amtrak and the future of rail travel in America.
Creative Use of Medium: Independent — Slate, for an explanation of the Enron story. Affiliated — MSNBC.com, for a national report on airport security.
Commentary (one division): Mark Fiore, MarkFiore.com.
For more information on the conference and the award nominees and recipients, visit the Online News Association Web site.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Croix Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent ne ws voice … click here.
Keynote speaker Merrill Brown, senior vice president of RealOne Services and former editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com, the online news service that he helped launch in 1996, called the Internet the "fastest-growing medium in history." And with access in half of U.S. households after just eight years in existence, he said, "there’s no turning back."
Perhaps more important for the journalists who made up most of his listeners, Brown added, "The need for our services has never been so profound." A growing audience expects Internet news coverage to be "instant, intense and, yes, stable," he said. "What we do today is vital from a journalism point of view, a business point of view and a community service point of view."
Brown called the Internet "the most important news medium of our time … using new storytelling techniques … and without distribution barriers."
Buzzwords at the conference included "convergence" (the coming together online of print, audio and visual mediums) and "commoditization" (casting the news as a marketable process and product). Another "C" word, "credibility," got a lot of attention, too, with the consensus at a panel on convergence journalism education being that Internet users "are not getting a lot of protein" in their online news diet.
There was much discussion of narrative vs. linear journalistic storytelling, of the integration of visual images with text, of the communication evolution from interpersonal (one to one) to mass (one to many) to interactive (many to many).
A hot topic among publications with both print and Internet editions was the sometimes adversarial relationship between the two. In response to a comment that online publications are often treated like stepchildren, Anthony Moor, new media editor for the Gannett chain's Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle, said, "In 10 years, the children will likely be taking care of the parents."
St. Thomas Source was one of four small, independent Internet publications nominated for General Excellence in Online Journalism, as a medium "that successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the unique abilities of the Web and represents the highest journalistic standards." Judging was of "excellence of content, interactivity, multimedia, design, navigation and community tools." First place in the category went to a news site about Benicia, California, that emphasizes interactivity with site visitors, inviting feedback to stories and publishing viewer comments at the end of news reports.
V.I. Source founder/publisher Shaun A. Pennington said, "Probably the biggest single reality check I got at the conference is that there aren't that many people doing what we are doing — running an exclusively online daily newspaper."
According to Bruce Koon, ONA president and executive news editor at Knight Ridder Digital, there will be more and more of them — and soon. "There were only a few represented this year at the conference," he said, "and as far as I know, there are only a few out there. They are the first wave. By next year's conference I expect to see more."
Koon acknowledged the financial struggles faced by the frontrunners in this new field, but said, "You just have to hang in there. It is the future of news."
The economic challenges for online publications, from small independents to affiliates of the major networks and newspaper chains, was a topic touched upon often at the conference. Many speakers talked of staff reductions and other cost-cutting measures their publications had been forced to make.
GothamGazette.com, an award finalist in the same category as the Source, is a not-for-profit enterprise supported in part by funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Participants on a panel looking at paid content agreed that the subscription-based model hasn't worked and would not work for most online newspapers. However, a recent article in Editor & Publisher by the news director of the Albuquerque Journal's Web site, which went to paid access a year ago, told a different story.
Peter Krasilovsky, vice president of Borrell Associates, noted that New Mexico is an isolated area served by no other major local online news media. Another selling point is great interest in the area (including Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Los Alamos) from outside, from a tourism perspective.
Albuquerque is not unlike the Virgin Islands in these regards, Pennington noted. A significant difference, however, is that the Albuquerque online paper is an affiliate of an established print product, while the Source newspapers have no print counterpart.
There are no plans for the Source to go to paid subscriptions, Pennington said, "but there are other revenue streams that do work." One is SourceDirect, the headline and quote-of-the-day e-mail service that was launched on April 1 and has some 200 subscribers. The service "is one of the offerings that many suggested as revenue-producing possibilities" at the conference, she said.
In a panel on Web site design, Dixon Rohr, a consultant to AOL Time Warner and IBM, said online newspaper users want "the focus on storytelling, without the need to focus on functionality — it's just there." Moor, on a panel discussing convergence, said, "It's about the reporting — in the form and at the time people want it, leveraging reporters in the places where they can be most useful to audiences."
Claude Albert, a multimedia editor at the Hartford Courant, said the challenge to those charged with developing online news services is to "make the technology work for you, focus on what matters most, and change the newsroom mindset while serving the values that journalism embraces."
Representing the Source at the conference were Pennington, senior news editor Jean Etsinger and reporter Molly Morris.
First-place award winners
The 2002 ONA award winners:
General Excellence, under 200,000 visitors: Independent — BeniciaNews.com of Benicia, California. Affiliated — PBS.org/Frontline-World.
General Excellence, over 200,000 visitors: Independent — CNET News.com, a technology news site. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com.
Breaking News: Independent — CNET News.com, for coverage of the end of Excite broadband service. Affiliated — CNN.com, for Sept. 11 coverage.
Enterprise Journalism: Independent — CNET News.com, for a look at loopholes in online banking. Affiliated — WashingtonPost.com, for investigating the police department with the nation's highest rate of shooting suspects.
Service Journalism: Independent — GothamGazette.com, for ideas on rebuilding New York after Sept. 11. Affiliated — ChicagoTribune.com, for its "report card" on the region's schools.
Feature Journalism: Independent — DigitalJournalist, for a multimedia project collecting photojournalism images (13.4 million so far) of Sept. 11. Affiliated — CSMonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor), for its look at Amtrak and the future of rail travel in America.
Creative Use of Medium: Independent — Slate, for an explanation of the Enron story. Affiliated — MSNBC.com, for a national report on airport security.
Commentary (one division): Mark Fiore, MarkFiore.com.
For more information on the conference and the award nominees and recipients, visit the Online News Association Web site.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Croix Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent ne ws voice … click here.
SLUDGE REMOVAL TO TAKE ANOTHER COUPLE WEEKS
Oct. 22, 2002 – The sludge removal job at what is called the Airport Lagoon sewage treatment facility should wrap up within the next two or three weeks, according to Jim Casey of the federal Environmental Protection Agency office on St. Thomas.
He said the Public Works Department had to remove the sludge because the lagoon, located southwest of Cyril E. King Airport, was about 90 percent filled up with sewage. Failure to do so would have caused the system to stop operating.
The sludge is being recycled — for use as ground cover at the Bovoni landfill.
Casey said preliminary work began in April and the actual sludge removal started in July. He had expected the job to be done by now but said that Public Works encountered some "unanticipated technical problems." Such things are to be expected, he said, adding that it also "took a while" to get the Public Works contracts for the work in place.
Meanwhile, the sewage normally carried into the lagoon is being dumped directly into the ocean. Casey said it is being disinfected to minimize the amount of pathogens but is not being treated to the point where it would meet EPA standards for treated sewage. "This was a compromise," he said.
The Planning and Natural Resources Department issued Public Works a permit for the project, but EPA is keeping an eye on the work, Casey said, and if he saw a problem, the department would take action.
Hollis Griffin, director of DPNR's Environmental Enforcement Division, said at a Senate Planning and Environmental Protection Committee hearing several weeks ago that a permit for removing the sludge expired in late July. He was off island on Tuesday and could not be reached for further information.
Several telephone calls made to Public Works Commissioner Wayne Callwood were not returned. Planning and Natural Resources information officer Annette Morales is on vacation for several weeks; all questions to DPNR personnel must go through her office, and a secretary said she has no replacement while she is on leave.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
He said the Public Works Department had to remove the sludge because the lagoon, located southwest of Cyril E. King Airport, was about 90 percent filled up with sewage. Failure to do so would have caused the system to stop operating.
The sludge is being recycled — for use as ground cover at the Bovoni landfill.
Casey said preliminary work began in April and the actual sludge removal started in July. He had expected the job to be done by now but said that Public Works encountered some "unanticipated technical problems." Such things are to be expected, he said, adding that it also "took a while" to get the Public Works contracts for the work in place.
Meanwhile, the sewage normally carried into the lagoon is being dumped directly into the ocean. Casey said it is being disinfected to minimize the amount of pathogens but is not being treated to the point where it would meet EPA standards for treated sewage. "This was a compromise," he said.
The Planning and Natural Resources Department issued Public Works a permit for the project, but EPA is keeping an eye on the work, Casey said, and if he saw a problem, the department would take action.
Hollis Griffin, director of DPNR's Environmental Enforcement Division, said at a Senate Planning and Environmental Protection Committee hearing several weeks ago that a permit for removing the sludge expired in late July. He was off island on Tuesday and could not be reached for further information.
Several telephone calls made to Public Works Commissioner Wayne Callwood were not returned. Planning and Natural Resources information officer Annette Morales is on vacation for several weeks; all questions to DPNR personnel must go through her office, and a secretary said she has no replacement while she is on leave.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES WORK TO REPAIR PHONE LINES
Oct. 22, 2002 – Innovative Telephone's temporary employees worked through the morning Tuesday to repair yet more damage inflicted on St. Croix telephone lines, this time late Monday night in the Negro Bay area near the Randall "Doc" James Racetrack.
On St. John at least a half dozen customers in the Coral Bay area said they were experiencing phone trouble on Tuesday, but Innovative Telephone spokesman Thomas Dunn said no acts of vandalism were reported there.
Dunn said Tuesday afternoon that the St. Croix damages had been repaired.
More than 8,000 telephone customers have been without service at some point since 310 Innovative Telephone and Innovative Cable employees went on strike three weeks ago.
While police and the FBI are investigating the sabotage, the vandals have left few clues as to their identity, St. Croix Deputy Police Chief Angel Santos said Monday. Santos asked that anyone with information about the matter contact police.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Croix Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
On St. John at least a half dozen customers in the Coral Bay area said they were experiencing phone trouble on Tuesday, but Innovative Telephone spokesman Thomas Dunn said no acts of vandalism were reported there.
Dunn said Tuesday afternoon that the St. Croix damages had been repaired.
More than 8,000 telephone customers have been without service at some point since 310 Innovative Telephone and Innovative Cable employees went on strike three weeks ago.
While police and the FBI are investigating the sabotage, the vandals have left few clues as to their identity, St. Croix Deputy Police Chief Angel Santos said Monday. Santos asked that anyone with information about the matter contact police.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Croix Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES WORK TO REPAIR PHONE LINES
Oct. 22, 2002 – Innovative Telephone's temporary employees worked through the morning Tuesday to repair yet more damage inflicted on St. Croix telephone lines, this time late Monday night in the Negro Bay area near the Randall "Doc" James Racetrack.
On St. John at least a half dozen customers in the Coral Bay area said they were experiencing phone trouble on Tuesday, but Innovative Telephone spokesman Thomas Dunn said no acts of vandalism were reported there.
Dunn said Tuesday afternoon that the St. Croix damages had been repaired.
More than 8,000 telephone customers have been without service at some point since 310 Innovative Telephone and Innovative Cable employees went on strike three weeks ago.
While police and the FBI are investigating the sabotage, the vandals have left few clues as to their identity, St. Croix Deputy Police Chief Angel Santos said Monday. Santos asked that anyone with information about the matter contact police.
Publisher's note : Like the St. John Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
On St. John at least a half dozen customers in the Coral Bay area said they were experiencing phone trouble on Tuesday, but Innovative Telephone spokesman Thomas Dunn said no acts of vandalism were reported there.
Dunn said Tuesday afternoon that the St. Croix damages had been repaired.
More than 8,000 telephone customers have been without service at some point since 310 Innovative Telephone and Innovative Cable employees went on strike three weeks ago.
While police and the FBI are investigating the sabotage, the vandals have left few clues as to their identity, St. Croix Deputy Police Chief Angel Santos said Monday. Santos asked that anyone with information about the matter contact police.
Publisher's note : Like the St. John Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES WORK TO REPAIR PHONE LINES
Oct. 22, 2002 – Innovative Telephone's temporary employees worked through the morning Tuesday to repair yet more damage inflicted on St. Croix telephone lines, this time late Monday night in the Negro Bay area near the Randall "Doc" James Racetrack.
On St. John at least a half dozen customers in the Coral Bay area said they were experiencing phone trouble on Tuesday, but Innovative Telephone spokesman Thomas Dunn said no acts of vandalism were reported there.
Dunn said Tuesday afternoon that the St. Croix damages had been repaired.
More than 8,000 telephone customers have been without service at some point since 310 Innovative Telephone and Innovative Cable employees went on strike three weeks ago.
While police and the FBI are investigating the sabotage, the vandals have left few clues as to their identity, St. Croix Deputy Police Chief Angel Santos said Monday. Santos asked that anyone with information about the matter contact police.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
On St. John at least a half dozen customers in the Coral Bay area said they were experiencing phone trouble on Tuesday, but Innovative Telephone spokesman Thomas Dunn said no acts of vandalism were reported there.
Dunn said Tuesday afternoon that the St. Croix damages had been repaired.
More than 8,000 telephone customers have been without service at some point since 310 Innovative Telephone and Innovative Cable employees went on strike three weeks ago.
While police and the FBI are investigating the sabotage, the vandals have left few clues as to their identity, St. Croix Deputy Police Chief Angel Santos said Monday. Santos asked that anyone with information about the matter contact police.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Thomas Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
