BURIEN – Two middle school cafeteria cashiers in the suburbs south of Seattle have been accused of stealing at least $34,900 from school breakfast and lunch sales.
Both have been fired and are under investigation by King County sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors, according to officials following a state audit of the Highline School District.
Auditors said the cafeteria cashiers at Cascade and Chinook middle schools misstated the number of meal purchases, but they also blamed school officials for inadequate monitoring of funds in the Child Nutrition Services Department.
The audit was ordered in January after school officials learned money was missing from the two cafeterias.
At Cascade, where auditors reported $23,185.79 missing, the primary cashier, a seven-year employee, admitted taking $5,249.22 from April 1 through Nov. 30 last year but denied responsibility for the rest of the funds.
At Chinook, a substitute cashier who refused to meet with investigators may have pocketed $15,164 by reporting 7,507 free- and reduced-price lunches that were actually purchased for the full price of $15,164, auditors said.
Mayor imposes hiring freeze: Mayor Paul Schell on Monday announced a hiring freeze and spending cuts in the face of weak tax revenues. The freeze covers all positions except uniformed police officers and firefighters. Schell said he was asking city departments to cut spending by $3 million by the end of the year. Sales tax growth for June was down 7.5 percent from June 2000, data released last month shows. Revenue from the city’s business and occupation tax in July and August dropped 2.6 percent from the same period last year. Those declines represent a budget shortfall of as much as $1.5 million, Schell said.
Council overrides Schell’s toilet veto: The City Council ended a summer-long spat with Mayor Paul Schell on Monday by overriding his veto and voting to spend $6.4 million over the next decade on five public toilets. Council members say the self-cleaning toilets are needed for homeless people, tourists and convenience. Schell maintains that the city could get the toilets for free by changing its sign ordinance to allow advertising on them, as well as on bus stations and kiosks. The toilets will be paid for by an annual surcharge of about $1.70 on residential water bills – not by the city’s general fund, which is where Schell has requested spending cuts.
Woman drowns on Nisqually: A 46-year-old woman drowned while rafting on the Nisqually River with her husband, fire officials said. The Yelm couple began heading ashore through calm water about 5 p.m. Sunday but encountered a stronger current that caused the raft to hit a log and overturn, said Scott Snyder, assistant fire chief for Pierce County Fire District 17. The husband swam to shore, but his wife was unable to do so and lost her grip on the raft, Snyder said. She was found unconscious about a half-mile downstream and was pronounced dead soon afterward.
Woman killed: A Parkland woman was shot to death Monday and Pierce County sheriff’s deputies were searching for a 34-year-old former boyfriend. Neighbors who heard shots said they saw the man fleeing with a gun. Deputies had already been looking for the man since last month because of a domestic violence case involving the woman, identified by the Pierce County medical examiner as Stephanie Sheaffer, 26. She worked at Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup. The woman, a mother of three, was shot in the front yard of her grandmother’s house, where she was picking up a daughter for a doctor’s appointment, KIRO-TV reported.
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