Grapevine council grills manager over ex-staff’s spending abuses: ‘We have to know more’

Grapevine’s elected leaders questioned their city manager Tuesday over audits that found two former department heads spent thousands in taxpayer dollars on personal shopping and travel. Residents packed the City Council chambers for a public meeting as City Manager Bruce Rumbelow described the improper use of city credit cards and his investigation into the misspending. Mayor William D. Tate said he and the council want more information on what happened.

Mitchell told audit investigators that he would sometimes split the transactions to keep them below $3,000, which would circumvent the city’s expense approval process. In one such example from late 2020, Mitchell spent a total of $10,137 at the luxury home furnishings store Restoration Hardware but broke the purchases into four transactions. Chiego, who was hired in 2019, spent up to $69,694, including purchases of lawn furniture for her house and thousands of dollars at Amazon, according to the audits. At Tuesday’s meeting, Grapevine Councilman Leon Leal asked Rumbelow why the spending wasn’t caught earlier. The city manager’s response, “because we trusted them,” was met with groans from the crowd. Rumbelow says he learned of the problem in October, after an auditor in city hall noticed unusual spending on Mitchell and Chiego’s cards. Rumbelow said he opened an internal investigation and hired a third-party firm, Weaver, to do its own audit. Both employees continued in their jobs during the investigations. Chiego resigned Feb. 21; Mitchell went into retirement the same day, Rumbelow said. The city manager didn’t tell the council about the investigation until the employees left. Leal, the councilman, said Rumbelow shouldn’t have gone about the investigation alone.