Fort Bend County is demanding Next Wave Strategies, a consulting firm hired for $345,000 to create a communication plan during the COVID-19 crisis. The county wants the firm to repay nearly $25,000 dollars, arguing that the outreach strategy they were hired to do didn’t accomplish its goal, according to the Fort Bend Herald.
New Wave Strategies was hired to clear up confusion about the COVID-19 vaccine with a communication plan through social media and by doing what they called “grassroots strategies”, that is basically knocking on doors. But, according to the county auditor, the firm submitted questionable expenses.
The audit also claims the firm did not comply with terms of the original agreement and that only 75% of the billed work can be substantiated. The audit froze some of the payments as they raised several questions about some expenses during the project. They put the example of July 2021 spreadsheets, that include billing of hours worked for the company’s two employees, Shekira Dennis and Erika Johnson, for 867 hours each at $59.36 per hour, totaling $102,839.25.
The Fort Bend Herald explains none of the employees of the firms answered to their calls on this issue but there is record that they have already answered to some of the audit questions, also, Next Wave Strategies consented to an inspection of the books and records for the purpose of verifying the amount of work performed under the scope of services.
