In July, Dennis Frohnafpel was paid $20,173.34 by the Lodi Board of Education right before he abruptly
left with no explanation from Nancy Cardone or Doug Petty. This was the most he was ever paid by the BOE. The Board of Education did not even hold any
board meetings in July.
Interim business administrators were always paid per day
(hours actually worked). Invoices must be submitted for additional pay (if attendance is
requested by the Board President for a Board Meeting held at night). The basis for the interim BA’s monthly pay
has always been attendance records and time sheets.
Two OPRA requests for Dennis Frohnapfel’s time sheets which are necessary to explain his pay in the month of July produced zero records in return. This is contradictory to past requests which produced something like this (the second most Frohnapfel was ever paid which was in March):
A public entity funded by local and State tax dollars
must be able to produce records to account for payments going to public employees. The Lodi Board of Education failed this basic
accounting principle.
Douglas Petty was required to sign off on Dennis Frohnapfel’s
time sheets. Board President Nancy
Cardone was required to sign off on Dennis Frohnapfel’s payments. Where are the time sheets? What did Doug Petty and Nancy Cardone sign
before Dennis Frohnapfel received his payment and ran out the door? Douglas Petty and Nancy Cardone must be investigated
and held accountable for allowing this payment and not producing any records
with their signatures.
The Board Office is producing no records for Frohnapfel’s
last payout- only stating that the payments were contractual. That isn’t true. Look at all the previous monthly payrolls
that I posted on this blog to see for yourself.
I was the Board President at one point, so I know what goes
on. The interims are paid based on an hourly
rate using time sheets and attendance records.
The Superintendent is required to sign off on the time sheets to verify
the hours were actually worked. The Board
President has to sign off on the payments.
When I was Board President, I caught the previous interim Business Administrator,
Robert Brown, submitting invoices for additional payments for hours never
worked. I caught him adding hours to
time sheets after I already signed them.
I also believe someone forged Frank Quatrone’s signature to one
of Brown’s time sheets (Quatrone retired week earlier). I immediately went to Kathryn Fedina and demanded
this issue be addressed. Forced to act only
after my complaint, Fedina recouped the monies for the Lodi taxpayers by deducting
it from Robert Brown’s next payment. There should have been a harsh penalty.
I know that people can be dishonest. When public officials get caught, the attitude
is always “it’s only a few thousand dollars”.
That’s not acceptable. It's the taxpayers’
money. There should be zero tolerance
for any fraud or theft. There must be
penalties and consequences. There must be checks and balance. There must be proper accounting.
Shown below are Dennis Frohnapfel’s last two contracts. You can’t word something to pay an interim for days/hours actually worked and then say you are paying 12 equal installments. That is contradictory. Every month should be different. This is what happens when you have crappy attorneys like you do with the politician run Matthew Giacobbe firm. Interims get paid for hours “actually worked”. They don’t get set salary plus a whole bunch of additional payments that nobody can account for.
The contracts also set a cap on total payment and that was never adhered to by this Board of Education, Doug Petty, and the Giacobbe attorneys. If Dennis Frohnapfel was capped at $83,600 for six months, how can the BOE pay him $20,173,34 for the first month of his contract alone?
Link to Frohnapfel’s contract that began July 2022:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-yiD-HvjSN8OsKMHRMgEEq5dCuOc-S5b/view?usp=sharing
Link to Frohnapfel’s previous contract July 2021 thru
June 2022:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AnpGQdQHVwzUKRxwGHvQzXWkYGp5JWpf/view?usp=sharing
