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McNamee, a retired certified public accountant and auditor, has been looking into the city's garbage contract for more than three months. He said he found almost immediately that the city had been missing out on franchise fees since October. He also found that some customers had been overbilled for years and that few people at City Hall understand how the garbage contract really works.
"It made me ask, what's going on in this city with something as simple as trash?" McNamee said.
An increase in rates in October by more than 50 percent, the result of the city having renewed its five-year garbage pickup contract with Waste Management, prompted McNamee to start poking around at City Hall.
He wanted to know why, if the rates increased for residents, the city wasn't collecting more on franchise fees.
But finding those answers sent him on what has now turned into a several-months-long audit of the contract.
Waste Management spokesman Butch Carter said all of McNamee's questions have been answered.
"He just keeps asking the same questions over and over," Carter said. "We're continuing to work with him and the city. But he makes all kinds of unfounded accusations in the middle of his questions. When he gets the answer he keeps asking questions, and he should just quit wasting everybody's time over and over."
McNamee said he has reviewed lots of information provided by Waste Management but he was unable to really analyze it because it was raw data. He said the city doesn't have a comprehensible list of customers, which is why some people have been overbilled, and that not enough information was given to residents when the rates went up.
"He's not totally wrong," city Finance Director Joe Safford said of McNamee. "[Waste Management's] system is very difficult to work with, and it is not easy to get the information in the format that we need."
Safford at first defended the low franchise fees, saying that when the city renewed the contract, Waste Management lost the exclusive right to pick up construction and demolition debris from construction sites.
But he has said since then that there was indeed more money to be collected. Safford said Waste Management discovered a clerical error and, as a result, paid the city about $20,000 in April.
"If we hadn't been pressing [Carter] on the issue about how franchise fees don't look right, he may not have been looking for the error," Safford said.
McNamee said the garbage contract protects Waste Management more than the city and its residents.
"We've got to get this contract fixed," he said. "Waste Management made errors, and all I'm getting is resistance."
Maria Herrera can be reached at meherrera@SunSentinel.com or 561-243-6544.
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