I am a Prestonsburg City Councilman and I am concerned about a situation we had at Stone Crest golf course last fall. It was brought to my attention after the fact that Mayor Jerry Fannin was going to investigate a loss of money due to alleged employee theft.

It seems that a supervisor and possibly three employees were misrepresenting their time cards in order to collect regular pay and overtime pay in excess of their hours worked. Their supervisor was not only aware of this fact, but allegedly approved this infraction. For whatever reason he did this, it was an illegal act.

According to information, the employees routinely worked from 7 a.m. until around noon each day, but wrote in their time as 4:30 p.m., with the blessings of their direct supervisor. This was reported to me by another City Councilman who witnessed the alleged crime at the time.

The situation was somewhat investigated, and some action was taken. Mayor Fannin reported that a reprimand was given and that the city’s money would be paid back.

Action after that was sketchy at best. I have never received a clear explanation as to what happened, or how much money was paid back. I was quite assertive that we should take action, as was most of the other city council. But ultimate authority was left with the Mayor.

I have since found out that apparently no money was paid back by this supervisor or these employees. I make the assumption here that this happened for at least a 12-month period, due to the fact that questions about work schedules were not answered throughout the winter months. On several occasions I and several other council members asked how a crew on a golf course could manage to work overtime during winter months, with frozen conditions.

If this happened for this amount of time, then the total amount of city money misappropriated would be around $38,220. Assuming this was true, why wasn’t any criminal action taken? The City council has no authority outside a meeting, the authority to hire, fire, and reprimand lies with the Mayor.

I am asking for an official investigation into the matter. Too many things have been swept under the rug because people don’t know about them.