Posted at: 11/04/2011 10:28 PM
By: Stuart Dyson, KOB Eyewitness News 4
 Art Montoya |
A city worker has found a way to save Albuquerque taxpayers more than $300,000 a year.
In some departments they call him the Cell Phone Nazi, but Art Montoya's real job title is network manager in the Infomation Technology unit of the city Finance and Administration Department.
Montoya saved the taxpayers $344,000 a year by tracking down every employee with a city cell phone, finding out if they're necessary or even being used, and disconnecting the ones that aren't.
He came up with 220 useless phones.
"That's a lot of phones that nobody's using," Montoya said. "Some of them were hidden in a desk, some were assigned to old employees that have retired. They would stick the phone in the desk there so nobody has ever seen the phone, so yeah, we were pretty surprised."
Art also found a cell phone plan that's cheaper for the city.
So guess who's this week's employee of the week?
"$344,000 a year - that's a year," said Mayor Richard Berry. "Think about what that means over a ten year period. That means over $3 million, $3 and a half million over ten years. That is a huge number."
So Montoya gets the honorary coffee cup, the certificate and the letter of appreciation.
The department he works in gets a $1,000 bonus - a sweet treat in a time of slashed budgets and hiring freezes.
Montoya's mission is part of Berry's "ESA" project - Efficiency, Stewardship, Accountability.
It's aimed at fighting fraud, abuse and waste.
So far, Berry said it's saved taxpayers a little over $1 million.
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Source: http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s2360120.shtml?cat=500
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