Gage Vota AUDIT TALK — Bellaire Mayor Robert Dodrill informs council and residents about a finding for recovery audit of the water and police department from the state auditor.

BELLAIRE – Bellaire Village Council and Mayor Robert Dodrill held a special meeting Wednesday morning in hopes to not only clear the air among themselves, but to provide transparency to residents.

Dodrill announced his resignation from the seat last Thursday, after just three months on the job, but rescinded his resignation Monday.

He resigned after the village’s fiscal officer, Ginny Favede, resigned during the village council’s previous meeting.

“Because of her resigning, I’ve been working strenuously with the state auditor’s office. We’ve been working together to get somebody in as the fiscal officer. There were a lot of issues that had came about,” Dodrill said. “We were trying to get a UAN [Unified Accounting Network] system in here. Right now it’s a Civica System but we’re trying to get a UAN system in here.”

He added that the state auditor’s office directed him to move to the UAN system on an emergency basis, because it was discovered and reported that several files were deleted.

“There were a lot of people that were upset that I could not come out publicly and tell anybody, because we were working with the state auditor’s office, and they told me I couldn’t. But now they told me it was OK to bring this to the public,” Dodrill said. “I know there were a lot of issues. People say we weren’t paying this or that or whatever, but I was left a mess from the previous administration. So we were trying to catch up.”

He said he’s aware that, due to him not being allowed to speak publicly about the issues, it led to tension between him and council.

“There was a lot of stuff that I could not tell council, and they were upset at me about it, and I know there’s a lot of issues because they thought that I was withholding information,” he said. “I was, but it was because of what the state auditor told me to do. My hands were tied

“There were a lot of discrepancies, and one of the things that we have found is that there was a lot of illegal action done,” he added. “There was $70,000 worth of IRS checks that were never deposited or cashed, left in the fiscal office from the previous administration. They were not cashed. They were not deposited. I have receipts of it.”

Dodrill said some of the checks are from as far back as 2022.

In addition to looking into the IRS check, the state auditor’s office has issued a finding for recovery audit for the water department and the police department funds. Dodrill said he is looking for the replacements for both Favede and former village administrator Scott Porter.

He said he did not fire Porter, that Porter resigned.

Council Member Janet Richardson said that, although Dodrill didn’t fire Porter, he told him that he was actively looking to fill his position.

“The mayor is hired to run the village under the Ohio Revised Code, the ordinances that are established here at the village and to uphold the policies that we currently have,” she said. “Council is in place to make sure that he is operating under those conditions, and when we find that that is no longer happening, we have to make very hard decisions, sometimes to stop the process

“The first thing I can tell you is this, this man [Dodrill] came into office with a wheelbarrow full of problems,” Richardson added.

She said that council and Dodrill need to work together moving forward to do something that has not happened in the village for at least 20 years — the mayor and council being on the same page.

Dodrill added that he and council need to put all of this behind them and work together.

“We want to be full disclosure on everything that’s happened so that we can finally get to a stage where there’s a clean slate. None of what happened in the past has anything to do with this administration or this council,” Richardson said. “Our goal is to stabilize the village. And now that you have sat here and probably long enough to go, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I get into?’ we need to both be on the same page. Our goals need to be the same. We have the opportunity, for the first time in almost two decades, to have the council and the administration working together with the same goals, the same benefits to our village.”

She added that the potholes in the village are terrible. Richardson said that she understands the village lost its administrator, but it shouldn’t take several months for a pothole to be filled. Council member Bill Schmitt said that he understands the village doesn’t have a lot of available funds and offered to use his own money to possibly fill potholes.

“And I can tell you that we have documentation about the village administrator that informs us that you told him you were actively seeking his replacement. He felt that he had no choice but to resign … for that to happen. It was a misstep, but let’s move on,” Richardson said.

Council and Dodrill then went into executive session to speak about personnel matters involving the candidates for the village’s service director, fiscal officer, water distribution coordinator and backhoe operator.