Hyattsville fixes bond statement after reporting
Amendment with reissued financial statements comes as bonds are scheduled to settle
Hyattsville posted an amended official bond statement today after Route One Finance reported that it used misstated fiscal year 2021 financial statements in the original bond statement. The original statement was signed by city mayor Robert Croslin and city treasurer Ronald Brooks.
The amendment says that Hyattsville “inadvertently included” the misstated FY 2021 audit, which was removed from the city website after issuance, and “intended to include” the corrected and re-issued FY 2021 audit, which was released in April 2024. The amendment is dated August 27, the same day Route One Finance reported the error, and was posted to Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA) today, August 29.
After the error in the original FY 2021 audit was revealed in March 2024, the city’s auditor, Robert Diss, told Brooks to take the documents off the city’s website “right away,” writing “we’ll just explain it as some accounts were grouped incorrectly, which is the truth.” Hyattsville’s continuing disclosure page for the 2019 bonds still lists the misstated original FY 2021 financial statements and has not been updated since the reissuance.
In regards to the Mayor signing things, when it finally came out, I had to bring to the attention of the PGC Board of Appeals a gross error in a memo signed on 6 June 2023 by Mayor Croslin (the County Board agreed in an email response dated 5 Feb 2024 that the City memo was in error). I did not get paid or even thanked for correcting the City's and Mayor's error. Will Ms. Tombes get a thank you from the City for her calling out this error?
I would be happy to run for Mayor if I get paid the same amount to randomly sign my name. The City Council costs Hyattsville taxpayers over $130,000 per year (as of 1 July 2024), of which the Mayor gets slightly over $17,000 per year according to Hyattsville City Ordinance 2019-02, dated 9 April 2018. As taxpayers, we should participate more and question the cost-versus-benefit of the current situation.