Uhrichsville Officials Push for Review of Department Head Spending Threshold

City of Uhrichsville’s mayor and auditor are in favor of reevaluating the threshold of how much a department head can spend without prior approval.

This amount currently sits at $3,000.

Auditor Aaron Rimer says departments are practical about their spending, but things do come up.

“Everybody tries hard for that not to happen. Unfortunately, there’s sometimes that some stuff falls behind. There’s times that they probably thought a purchase order was issued and maybe it hadn’t been.”

Mayor Jim Zucal asked for a committee assignment to review the spending amount following his opposition when the law director hired an outside firm, at $600 per hour, to review documents for the fully grant funded Wardell Street project.

“I think what needs to come out of this is committee assignment. If we’re going to get items such as these, at one time, the mayor had to approve purchases over $5,000 or council had to approve purchases before someone just picking the phone up and just saying ‘hey, you’re hired’.”

Council agreed to pay the law firms $2,800 bill.

Additionally, resolutions passed regarding previous purchases related to orders under the dollar amount that were mixed in the shuffle of multiple auditors over the past year.