Storm Lake fire volunteer payroll overpaid by nearly $38,000

A months-long gap in oversight inside the Storm Lake Fire Department allowed volunteer payroll to run nearly $38,000 too high before Finance Manager Tyler Gibbins' audit exposed the mistake.

City officials said the overpayment happened during the transition from former chief Glenn Schlesser to Terence Sinner. Schlesser stepped down last July, and Sinner did not begin until late October, leaving the department without steady day-to-day oversight of volunteer hours and call responses for several months.

Sinner told the Storm Lake City Council that he did not have access to the Firehouse software system during the handoff. At the time, only the captain in charge of records could use the system, which meant the city lacked a second set of eyes on the volunteer payroll being entered. The overpayment grew from a mix of miscalculations, incorrect pay rates and calls that were credited to volunteers who had not actually responded.

The problem first surfaced in February, when City Hall described it as a potential employee overpayment and said it would be audited. The issue became public in the city’s required budget amendment discussion on May 19 and 20, when officials narrowed the problem to volunteer fire payroll. Mayor Meg McKeon praised the fire department and city staff for bringing the error forward, while City Manager Keri Navratil cut off discussion as the conversation approached personnel details.

No repayment plan was laid out in the public council discussion. The city also did not announce any service changes tied to the error, which affects payroll accounting rather than the department’s emergency response operations.

Sinner said the department has now tightened its controls with a double-blind system, so two people independently track call responses and service hours before anything is sent to City Hall. The department is also using sign-in sheets for volunteers and comparing them with dispatch records from the Buena Vista County Communications Center, which has handled countywide emergency dispatch since October 1975.

The payroll mistake lands in a department that covers 93 square miles, including Storm Lake, Truesdale, Lakeside and portions of Hayes, Washington and Grant townships. City materials describe the Storm Lake Fire Department as a combination operation relying on a small paid staff and volunteers, including 27 volunteer firefighters on the city’s department page and 21 paid-on-call professionals in the 2025 annual report. For Storm Lake, the episode is a reminder that volunteer service depends on the same controls, bookkeeping and financial checks as any other city function.