TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - Democratic Toledo Mayoral candidate Wade Kapszukiewicz Friday said he has found the source of $8 million missing and eventually found in the city budget.
Kapszukiewicz accused incumbent mayor and opponent Paula Hicks-Hudson of mismanagement.
"If my team and I have been able to discover this information by doing research and a little hard work, the city of Toledo Finance Department should have been able to find it too," Kapszukiewicz said. "It should have been easy."
In March, 2011, Toledo's trash collection service was sold to a private company including forty trucks. The deal was approved by then city council members Hicks-Hudson and George Sarantou.
Eight million dollars was set aside by the city to guarantee Toledo had money to privatize garbage collection and put into a debt service fund.
In 2016, documents provided by Kapszukiewicz show Hicks-Hudson and her finance director Sarantou knowingly had the $8 million transferred into a Franklin Park Mall TIF, a tax increment finance fund, to pay for roadwork around the mall.
Kapszukiewicz says the mayor and her administration knew about the transaction and took steps to cover it up. He says it's time for a change at city hall to "clean this mess up once and for all."
"Enough is enough. It's time for the city of Toledo to employ CPAs and individuals with competency and experience in municipal finance," Kapszukiewicz said. "We must have the highest quality of fiscal management in that office and every office in the city of Toledo."
Hicks-Hudson issued a statement saying: "The discovery is an entertaining but inaccurate guess."
She goes on to say it's all an effort by Kapszukiewicz to 'bolster his uninspired campaign.'
