The City of Lebanon has launched separate criminal and administrative investigations into allegations of illegal activity involving public money by multiple employees within the city’s Department of Public Works.
Theft has been the “main focus” of the police investigation since October, Lebanon Police Chief Phil Roberts said Monday. Roberts declined to say how many individuals are under investigation.
The city’s internal investigation is focused on “purchases and accountability of city equipment,” City Manager Shaun Mulholland said in a Monday interview. He declined to share the nature of the purchases or equipment in question.
The city does not yet know how much money is involved, but the suspect activity has been ongoing for “a couple of years,” Mulholland said. “It’s not just one simple thing, it’s complex, there’s a lot of activities there that occurred.”
Mulholland said he and other city administrators learned about the alleged wrongdoing in early October and began a preliminary probe. After finding enough evidence to suggest crimes had occurred within the public works department, city officials turned the investigation over to police, Mulholland said.
The city has since relaunched its own internal administrative investigation, and both inquiries remain ongoing.
Mulholland would not say how city officials became alerted to the potential malfeasance.
Roberts estimated that the criminal investigation could finish in the next three or four weeks.
The city’s internal investigation will take “at least several more weeks to complete, hopefully no later than the end of this calendar year,” Mulholland said in a Friday email. “The full scope of the matters to be investigated has not been fully determined.”
The city is investigating multiple public works employees, Mulholland said. He declined to share how many city employees are under investigation, but said with the exception of one employee who died in October, all of those whose conduct is under review are still actively working for the department.
The director of the department, Jay Cairelli, is not suspected of involvement, Mulholland said Monday. Cairelli, formerly the department’s assistant director, was promoted to director in October 2023. Cairelli declined to comment on Monday.
The department has eight divisions, handling everything from water and wastewater operations to cemetery and road maintenance. The city’s website lists nearly 60 positions on the public works organizational chart.
Mulholland said he issued a directive to “take a number of steps to address” the situation, including instructing city employees to expedite the process of cataloging all city property into a “relatively new” asset management system. Major assets — such as vehicles and buildings — are already cataloged in that system, but the “detail of pieces of equipment from generators to saws and all the tools that they have” in the DPW have not yet been recorded, he said.
Items entered into the system will be attached to a serial number and the city can track exactly what it owns and where items should be located. Once assets are cataloged, Mulholland said “random audits” will be done to verify that “equipment is actually where it’s supposed to be.”
More policies and directives in response to the allegations will likely be implemented when the investigation is complete, Mulholland said.
The City Council has been “briefed on and kept appraised of the situation regarding the internal investigation and criminal investigation,” Councilor Doug Whittlesey said in a Monday email. He declined to provide further comment on the ongoing investigation.
Mayor Tim McNamara also declined to comment and other city councilors did not respond to a request for comment on Monday
Lebanon’s public works department is not the only municipal division in New Hampshire undergoing scrutiny for alleged misconduct.
In October, five employees of the Seabrook public works department were charged with theft of public funds by deception and fraudulent use of a credit card, Seacoast Online reported. The Seabrook employees allegedly used a town credit card to buy items from a nearby outdoors store and returned the items in exchange for gift cards that they used to make personal purchases. The five employees were placed on paid administrative leave. Three were charged with felonies and face potential prison sentences. The others were charged with misdemeanors and face potential fines.
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