first published week of: 08/08/2016
Former Assistant City Manager Jordan Leonard talks about his 2012 discovery of over one million dollars of uncollected water bills in inactive accounts in the city of Opa-locka
For Opa-locka Mayor Myra Taylor, the Vankara School represents her legacy, a sprawling, neatly landscaped institution that educated generations of children in Christian values.
There were morning prayers and required uniforms at the private school, along with a curriculum grounded in the three Rs.
But when it came to paying its bills, the school broke its own rules.
Year after year, the mayor’s school that once hosted fundraisers for politicians ran up tens of thousands in water and sewer charges at the campus, and never paid the bills.
The charges reached $30,000 in 2010. The following year, the amount doubled, and to this day, Vankara owes nearly $120,000 for the services — with no effort by the city to stop the water or demand the money be paid during its worst economic crisis.
The school wasn’t the only customer to benefit from the city’s largesse. Opa-locka turned its water and sewer system into an operation that let scores of businesses and residents with connections to the city tap into Opa-locka’s most precious resource while the city was edging toward insolvency, the Miami Herald found. continued…