The City of Archer has amassed a $1.3 million debt, and elected officials said it could take five to 10 years to repay.
The debt, which totals $1,386 for each of Archer’s 1,154 residents, comes from failing to pay income taxes, misusing Wild Places Public Spaces money and taking out loans to support the city’s wastewater facility.
As a comparison, the debt is nearly equal to the $1.6 million the city collected in fees and property tax revenue last year.
“It was a train wreck. It was just one thing after the other piling up,” Karen Fiore, an Archer resident, said about the debt. Fiore is also the budget manager for Gainesville Regional Utilities.
At a meeting in January, commissioners began a city finance meeting looking for ways out of the financial morass.
City commissioners are paying Dallas Lee, the assistant city manager of Newberry, $95 an hour to fix the structural issues in Archer’s financial department.
Lee presented an amended budget to the city which cut hundreds of thousands of dollars, reaping $66,974 in savings that can go toward paying the city’s debt.
The money came from cutting city employees’ salaries, canceling planned upgrades to the Archer Community center, and using funds earmarked for road repair and tree removal toward paying the debt.
At January’s meeting, elected officials also looked backwards, pointing fingers at who they say is responsible for the financial crisis.
They discussed ways to pursue a civil lawsuit against their former city manager, Charles Hammond, who was paid $20,000 more than he should have before being fired in 2024. Mayor Fletcher Hope said Hammond is responsible for a lot of the city’s debt.
Hammond did not return WUFT’s requests for comment.
According to Fiore, the city’s financial struggle started, but didn’t end, with the former city manager.
“[I] discovered that he was putting forth a budget that had a deficit,” Fiore said about a city budget Hammond brought to the city commission on Sept. 16, 2024. “That’s when I started getting really vocal.”
Fiore says fellow Archer residents convinced her to look into the city’s finances because of drama surrounding the proposed construction of a concrete mixing plant. Fiore said she found that a budget being proposed by Hammond had the city spending more than they were making. She said that Hammond didn’t specify where the extra money would come from in that budget.
Three days later, Fiore brought her findings to the city commission, and they voted to fire Hammond. Commissioners then substituted his budget with one drafted by Fiore instead.
Less than a month after Hammond was fired, the city’s bookkeeper, Cindy Thomas, told commissioners that members of the finance department had failed to pay the Internal Revenue Service $177,000 deducted as income taxes from city employees’ paychecks. That money instead went into the city’s budget.
That $177,000 has since ballooned to $233,483.94 because of accrued interest. City leaders say they’re focusing on paying the IRS first and foremost. They said they’ve already made two payments, although they didn’t say for how much.
Lee said the city also needs to pay Ameris Bank $600,000 after taking out a loan to support the city’s wastewater system.
Auditors say city leaders failed to properly track some residents’ water usage, significantly lowering how much they paid the city. The audit says Archer’s wastewater facility also leaked regularly, draining both water and money from the city.
The audit also revealed that city officials misspent an estimated $300,000 of Wild Spaces Public Places one-cent sales tax money. The surtax money is meant o be spent on things like parks, conservation, roads and housing initiatives.
City leaders have set aside around $80,000 in their amended fiscal year 2025 budget that will go toward replenishing that surtax fund.
City leaders also owed the engineering and grant administration firm Kimley-Horn $300,000. Lee says the money was originally supposed to be paid through grants and that $200,000 will be repaid soon.
Auditors also revealed that in fiscal year 2023, Hammond’s paychecks were $20,000 larger than they should have been. Auditors say he got reimbursed twice for travel fees and was given extra vacation pay.
Fiore says she doesn’t believe that Hammond’s fatter paycheck was a result of negligence.
“I think it’s criminal… the fact that he knew that he got an extra paycheck… I mean, that’s not something you just don’t notice. There should be a criminal investigation around it,” she said.
At January’s city finance meeting, city attorney Kiersten Ballou said the city is negotiating with its insurance company to help pay for a civil lawsuit against Hammond.
Fiore said misusing money from income taxes falls on Hammond’s shoulders as well.
“It was his responsibility to oversee all the finances at the city, and he failed,” Fiore said. “He wasn’t double-checking [Cindy Thomas’] work. He wasn’t making sure she was doing her work.”
“You had [Hammond] on record, for an interview, stating that he left all of the record keeping to Cindy, as if he washed his hands. His responsibility is the money at the city,” Fiore said.
Archer Mayor Fletcher Hope said that in retrospect he placed too much trust in Hammond.
“I just saw good things happening from Mr. Hammond and his management style for three or four years, and we took that for granted.”
Hope said that going forward, he will have more oversight into the city’s finances. Fiore, however, said she doesn’t have faith in the city leaders who allowed Hammond’s work to go unchecked.
“The mayor is responsible to maintain the city manager’s contract,” Fiore said.
Fiore said the blame for the debt lies with the city commission just as much as Hammond, and added that there were several red flags.
Fiore said audits were taking much longer than usual, and that city employees were complaining about an accounting software that was implemented in 2023. She said these should have been warning signs for the commission to step up and look over Hammond’s shoulders.
Fiore said she was also frustrated that she had to point out that Hammond’s budget was unbalanced.
“They’re just not qualified. I hate to say it, but it’s just really they don’t understand it.”
Fiore said she and other concerned Archer residents think it’s time for a change in leadership.
“We believe that the commission should actually resign. They've shown no ability to run the city,” Fiore said.
She also blasted the commission’s decision to spend nearly $2,000 on 4-foot tall “Welcome to Archer” signs.
“Even when all of these numbers were thrown at them, they would still sit there and approve additional items to be spent instead of saying, ‘no more spending until this is taken care of,’” she said.
Fiore said several Archer residents think the debt could lead to their city charter being dissolved.
“Some of the citizens here in Archer were thinking about petitioning the governor to take action,” Fiore said. She said members of her community want Archer to remain a city, but they feel that Alachua County or state leaders could do a better job managing it. “If this commission continues to be allowed to run the city,” she explained, “I don't see us being able to get out of the hole.”
Hope is more optimistic about resolving the debt issue, but he said it could take five to 10 years.
Hope said he’s well aware of communities like Hastings in St. Johns County being dissolved into their counties after accruing similar debts. He said that while Hastings didn’t take the proper steps to solve their financial issues, Archer was quick to course correct.
“That, to me, that’s the difference here,” Hope said to illustrate the differences between Hastings' and Archer’s situations. “I certainly will meet with the interim city manager on a, or at least on a weekly basis in between meetings to ensure that there's oversight.”
City commissioners have started meeting more often, hosting an extra meeting on the last Monday of every month, to address issues surrounding the debt.
Hope said that hiring Lee, who is also the assistant city manager for Newberry, gives him faith in fixing the financial issues.
Lee is working with city leaders to find ways of paying the IRS, and he is working with employees to solve issues within the accounting department.
The North Central Florida Regional Planning Council, a group created to help foster economic development in north central Florida, will help city leaders find ways of allocating their budget to spend the Wild Spaces Public Places surtax money correctly.
Hope is the chair of that council. It won’t start discussing Archer’s debt until at least February.