Oh, the things you accidentally find sometimes when looking through public records. I really missed my calling as a detective.
I have recently been going over 2019 time sheets for our IT Department to see exactly how many overtime hours the City got jammed for during the Aug 16th Ransomware attack (spoiler: over 100 hours). You remember that, I assume? A bunch of equipment got wrecked, nobody got in trouble or even questioned, no explanation was ever publicly given.…THAT ransomware attack.
Anyways, I noticed something weird on Network Administrator Kristy Acevedo’s time sheet for the end of September. Thursday September 26, Friday September 27th and Monday September 30th her time sheet is marked “ADM LEAVE PD.”
Or, paid administrative leave. Conveniently taken around the weekend so she got a sweet 5-day vacation and got paid as if she worked those days. Love it! But why would our intrepid IT girl be in any trouble? Especially just weeks after she ‘saved the day’ by cleaning up the ransomware attack her very department allowed?
I then remembered what ELSE happened around October 1st and was quietly buried for over a month: Gary Cox was shown the door ‘resigned’ ….remember?? He “submitted a letter of resignation on October 1st”, according to a November 5th Dispatch article.
Hmmmm. Now, with well over 100 City employees running around town (many of whom do REAL work like fix broken pipes, repair downed power lines and toss violent douche bags in jail), you can be sure there are more than a few who don’t care for the IT Department people in their cushy overpaid Nerf world job. Subsequently (look it up, Monica) I had heard hilarious rumors that Kristy was tangled up in the Gary Cox ‘resignation’ affair.
I won’t go into too much detail but supposedly it involved a fairly harmless prank with some Goldfish crackers (hey, she really IS The Joker!!).
I don’t traffic in rumors. I try to stick to facts – usually taken straight from City documents or City council’s own minutes. But this is just TOO big of a coincidence to NOT be related….and here is a FACT staring me in the face. Paid administrative leave for three days at exactly the time former Assistant City Manager Gary Cox was let go resigned.
Seems to me Gary got shafted pretty hard. He appears to have been shown the door while Kristy was only “punished” with 5 days of paid vacation administrative leave.
Ouch, man.
Of course, we’ll never know the real story. No way Elmo Spinley will ever let that one out!
[P.S. to poor Gary Cox out there in Houston: anonymous tips are always welcome!]