Oops, Fleet Did It Again

When it rains at the city's Fleet Services department, it pours tires. Indeed, the saga of the city's scrap tires that were abandoned on a property in Southeast Austin continues this week as the city investigates an allegation that Fleet Officer Gerry Calk allowed Victor Almaguer, on whose property the tires were moldering, to sell 75 of the tires to a third party.

According to Almaguer, while city workers were at the tract of land he leases, where city tires had been accumulating since 2003, a third party approached Almaguer to ask if he could buy a small trailerload of the scrapped rubber; Almaguer says he asked Calk for permission to do so and was told that would be fine because it would mean the city wouldn't "have to move or touch them," he said. Almaguer said he sold the tires to the man for $10 each and that he was allowed to keep the money. If the tires were indeed city property as Almaguer claims, the decision to allow Almaguer to sell them is confounding, since the city was there to remove thousands of tires that had, essentially, been abandoned on the property. Under state law, the city is responsible for tracking its rubber to final disposal, a process that must be tracked via a five-part written manifest form.

In December 2009, the Chronicle reported that the city had neglected its duty to properly manifest and track tire disposals since at least 2006. Almaguer, who previously held a contract to fix flats on city vehicles, is not registered to transport, store, or dispose of tires, though he said he'd done so for years at the direction of former Tire Program Man­ager Bill Janousek, who was ultimately terminated earlier this year, allegedly for violating a city personnel policy. (Janousek is currently trying to get his job back.) The city has since fixed its manifesting process and has contracted with a tire recycler to handle the city's scrap. In fact, it was the new vendor that the city contracted with who was visiting Alma­guer's property in February to remove the tires accumulated there. Having the vendor remove the tires would guarantee their proper disposal – allowing Almaguer to sell dozens of them to a third party, however, creates the same problem the city has been trying to resolve. In other words, although the city is liable for the ultimate disposal of those tires, it has again dropped the ball with at least 75.

In an e-mail, city spokesman Reyne Telles told us the city is "currently looking into the claim" that city tires "may have been improperly removed" from Almaguer's property. The "City takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously," he wrote.