The Safe Deposit Box at Bank of America
Addison served as the treasurer for the MetroPlex Mayors Association which is a group of area mayors that meet once a month at the Marriott Quorum in Addison. Each city pays dues to cover their mayor’s breakfast and name tags. That is pretty much the extent of the type of expenditures from this checking account. The two signatories on the checking account were me as the City Manager of Addison and Michele Covino, my Assistant. Michele retired and I was about to retire, so Charles Goff, Assistant to the City Manager and Lea Dunn, who was about to become the City Manager and I went to the Bank of America at Preston and Belt Line to change the signatories to Charles and Lea.
The banker at the Preston Branch said, “Do you know that you still have a safe deposit box at the Belt Line and the Tollway location of Bank of America?” They said it had not been opened since Randy Moravec opened it in 2004 and we had not been paying for it. The Town had changed banks to Frost Bank some years earlier, so there was no reason for us to know we still had this box at Bank of America.
There were three signatories on the original account. Randy Moravec the Director of Finance, Sandra Goforth the Chief Accountant and me as the City Manager. Randy and Sandra had retired by this time in 2014 and Sandra passed away shortly after retiring, so I would have to go to the bank since I was the only remaining signatory.
Randy Moravec has said thinking back he recalls that before we had a full time Information Technology Department we used to store the data backups for the town’s financial system at the bank. That would explain why Sandra Goforth, the Chief Accountant was the person who accessed the safe deposit box most frequently and why I would have no reason to access it over all those years.
Charles and I went over the next day and met with a banker and he had me sign a card to get admittance to the safe deposit area. He took us back and showed us where the box was and we tried a number of keys the Finance Department had provided, but none of them would open the box. Since we could not access the box he drew a line through my name where I had signed on the card.
I retired at the end of February 2014 and really had not thought about it until a couple of weeks ago when I heard that there was an item on the City Council agenda to discuss the safe deposit box and that the Finance Department thought they had found the key. The Mayor wanted the box opened and he wanted it videotaped. That was apparently done and there was nothing in the box.
The idea that finding an unused safe deposit box would be a mystery or agenda item is ludicrous. This was a housekeeping item that should have been addressed with a couple of phone calls by the city staff.