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Points to consider:
1. Mayor Picard has indemnified Checkers form any legal issues that may arise with the findings of the forensic audit. This is actually against our City Charter – and (according to the accounting people I have spoken with) very uncommon in a situation like this.
2. One of the key findings of this audit has to do with the issue of the City and its BID process. Specifically, the former administration was criticized for not taking construction projects out to bid. According to the City Charter, any project totaling over $3,500 must go through a bidding process. HOWEVER, this forensic audit was not taken out for bid. I go to many of the City Council meetings – and as I best recall, only one Council Member, Nancy Rossi, had issue with the audit project not going to bid.
3. I have been unable to get all of the “Attached Exhibits” for further analysis. They are not available on the City’s website. These are invaluable in the complete analysis of the forensic audit.
4. If you read the Summary of Findings – you will note that a majority of the 28 points are duplicate/saying the same things. This is to add to the volume of the findings, and also make things look worse than they are. In fact, the basis of ALL of the commentary in this lengthy document is centered around 3 projects. (for example if you read through, points 8 and 9 are restatements of the points covered in points 1 through 5).
5. The night of the audit presentation, the representative from CHECKERS was very clear, that when a school project is completed, the state comes in to audit the project. The state has cleared the city on all previous projects, with the exception of the Mackrille, Seth Haley and West High projects. I would question why we are going back through these three specific projects and pointing out to the state when mistakes have been made, (and in some cases the projects aren’t finished.) This ultimately (most probably) is going to lead to the city having to repay monies back to the state. At a time when our city is under such a budget crisis, why would we do this????? Also, based on testimony from Sawyer and Legg – I would have liked them to be able to look at some of the information in advance so they could have spoken more intelligently about the documents in question.
6. None of the City Council members from previous terms were interviewed. As you will note the team from CHECKERS referred to the Council’s confusion about bonding issues during the presentation from CHECKERS at the Bailey School. Why did they not get interviewed? Furthermore – and more importantly, on page 185 of the document it speaks about bonding – and the Mayor’s responsibility in the bonding process. You will note it is actually the City Council that approves all bonding – the Mayor then just applies his signature. And again as Picard was the Chair of the Council during several of the years in question why was he not interviewed as a part of the process?
7. I am not sure exactly who Ronald Bailey is (because they did not put his title as they did with ALL OTHER INTERVIEWEES… ) but during his interviews, that in my opinion were somewhat damaging, Tom Reilly, Mayor Picard’s Father-In-Law, sat in. Very interesting.
8. Regarding the summary points only:
a. Point 1 – “The city has exceeded expenditures…” – no where in the document have I found where this has been quantified as a percentage of total capital projects that the city has undertaken in those years.
b. Point 5 – “The city’s over bonding will yield cash deficits in future years…..” This assumes stagnant tax revenues; which will NOT be the case given the incoming Wal-Mart and other businesses in the Saw Mill Road area.
c. Point 6 – “The city has improperly charged certain expenditures….” In total, $139,582 of misclassified expenditures were found over a 5 year period. If you consider the total budget for those years is about $625M – as a percentage this is only 0.022 (less than a quarter of a percentage). In most companies today, that would be an OUTSTANDING percentage over 5 years. Additionally, CHECKERS failed to definitely prove that these expenses were not directly associated with the projects. (i.e. Dunkin Donuts could have been purchased for the morning crew on one of the projects. Yes, it should have been charged as a misc. expense and not to the project, but this is not an uncommon practice in accounting for large projects with lots of expenses associated.)
d. Points 10 and 11 – Again, here the audit is assuming stagnant tax revenues in their analysis.
e. Point 22 – A criticism is made by the audit firm for the City being in strict compliance with State Law on document retention. So I assume the audit firm is suggesting we go against State Law for future document retention matters?
f. Point 25 – “The City has failed to properly educate the City Council about bonding procedures”, as I have pointed out, the Mayor signs off on bonding versus initiating it. If the City Council was unclear about bonding WHY did they vote to approve the bonding?
g. Point 26 – “There is a lack of communications by City departments”, that is a very big leap. We are talking about 3 projects here – if you look at the whole scope of what the City does, this is really a very small piece. The auditor can say that on “specific projects” there was a lack of communication, but he cannot say that about all projects.
h. Points 14 and 28 are again duplicates.
What I have found in the documents is basically three projects that have gone awry – and some mistakes in accounting. Most certainly these mistakes need to be taken care of – and checks put in place so in the future it does not happen again.
However, I can not find any, ANY form of illegal or criminal actions amongst the findings. I find it disappointing that our current Mayor has mentioned criminal allegations in at least three separate statements to the taxpayers and or media. (I am certain there are more).
This has to stop – we are messing with people’s lives. Let’s just correct the mistakes and move on with making the city an even better place to live.
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