KRUM — A demand letter sent to former mayor Larry Lamonica by the city’s attorney has failed to turn up city records and files missing from City Hall since Lamonica left office.

Lance Vanzant wrote the letter July 6, nearly two months after Lamonica was defeated in a re-election bid during the May 12 general election.

Lamonica said he’d visited with Vanzant in person about the letter and told Vanzant that he felt it was up to the city secretary and city engineer to keep records. Lamonica did not provide a written reply to the demand letter.

“He [Vanzant] told me not to bother,” Lamonica said.

But city officials were not satisfied with Lamonica’s response.

“He told me the city had copies of any documents in his possession and that he wouldn’t be returning anything,” Vanzant said.

Vanzant said he took Lamonica at his word but that the city does not consider the matter closed.

In addition to specifying records that a city engineer and secretary must maintain, the Texas Local Government Code also classifies the “intentional failure to deliver records” by an office holder to a successor as a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by a fine up to $4,000 and a year in jail.

City leaders are giving Lamonica time “to do the right thing,” Mayor Terri Wilson said.

“However, if it turns out that something missing is irreplaceable or valuable, we will consider pressing charges,” Wilson said.

As he left office, Lamonica took his personal notes with him, he said.

“I made copies of everything I needed to bring with me,” Lamonica said. “But with city records, that’s the secretary’s job.”

No one cleaned out the mayor’s office when he took over, he said.

“I vowed I would not do that to my successor,” Lamonica said. “There were crackers in the drawers — and old insulin injectors.”

After the election, city employees observed Lamonica cleaning out his office at city hall, filling up several large, black garbage bags and taking them outside to the city’s garbage bin. City Secretary Karen Blakey said she saw him throwing away a set of old law books.

“At that time, the files were still there,” Blakey said.

While Lamonica was dumping the trash bags, Blakey took one file box from the mayor’s office and put it in a storage closet until he left, she said.

When Wilson moved into the mayor’s office, she found all the filing cabinets empty, and other crucial information missing, Blakey said.

“There were no numbers on the Rolodex, and the city cellphone was wiped clean,” of important phone numbers, Wilson said.

Lamonica had keys to the building until the changeover, after which the city replaced the locks on all city property.

In the months before the May election, the City Council held a number of executive session meetings in the mayor’s office, Wilson said.

As a member of the City Council in the room, she observed three filing cabinets full of documents at that time, she said.

But since taking over, Wilson has had to rebuild files for the mayor’s office.

During a council meeting in early July, Krum resident Bill Estes questioned whether the city would ever build a fire station on two acres that he and his family planned to donate to the city for that purpose.

He repeatedly referred to documents that spelled out the agreement between the city and the family, saying that time had run out on a two-year window to build the new station.

At one point during the meeting, Wilson asked Estes to provide the city with copies of the agreement, telling him that city staff had been unable to locate its own copies of the agreement.

She has had to ask others for assistance in rebuilding other files, including entities involved in Krum’s reclamation of water rights from Bolivar Water Supply, Wilson said.

PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881. Her e-mail address is pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com.