Is Anyone Meeting Their Fiduciary Responsibility ??

City Attorney Roberts,
Honeymoons for new Finance Directors aside the time has passed to ask if anyone is adequately discharging their fiduciary responsibilities at the City of Port Orange in a manner in which taxpayers can be confident that their tax dollars are being properly accounted for ?
Can the Finance Director be adequately discharging her Fiduciary responsibility while failing to prepare and provide for Council review the well established monthly Pooled Cash and Investments Report since July 2014, and the equally well established Golf Course Cash Flows Report since September 2014 with the latter report being released only under heavy public records pressure and then as heavily annotated as being in ERROR, WORK IN PROCESS, Does not balance or reflect closing entries.
September’s Golf Course Cash Flow report is indeed in error with no reference to the $1 per round that is supposed to be paid to the R&R Account, and with an obvious $ 61,912.95 transfer to the Golf Course being reported as a cash inflow resulting in an ending balance discrepancy of at least that amount. The Golf Course Cash Flow reports have been known to be in error since August 2014 when the Finance Director first attempted to not release same until public records pressure forced its release on October 1st 2014 with a subsequent re-release on October 27th that attempted to clarify the October 1st release.
The Finance Director has known these important monthly Golf Cash Flow reports contained significant errors since at least mid September and some 5 months later they remain un-corrected with the September report appearing to have been prepared by someone not in possession of the requisite ability to prepare same.
Can the Manager be adequately discharging his Fiduciary responsibility – WHILE permitting established cash reporting such as the Pooled Cash and Investments Report to no longer be prepared or provided for Council review, AND while why he is permitting his Finance Director to no longer adequately account for the taxpayers interest in these Golf Course accounts for over 5 months, AND is likewise permitting the omission of the Golf Course Cash Flows Report from the monthly financial reports to Council, COMBINED his failure to provide a comprehensive explanation to Council, in a public meeting at least, as to the severity of the ‘ problems’ alluded to quietly, as being left by the Kisela administration regarding an adequate work-around protocol to those problems so as to ensure current processing is not compromised as appears to be the case with the Golf Course accounts.
At this juncture AS we have not received any assurances regarding the severity of the ‘problems’ in Finance, and the only demonstrable evidence we have received suggests those problems have not been resolved in a timely manner, IT IS difficult to see how either the Manager or his Finance Director are adequately discharging their Fiduciary responsibilities which brings us to Council and your responsibility to properly advise Council as to their responsibilities including their Fiduciary responsibility to ensure taxpayer monies are being adequately accounted for and with proper segregation.
If the Finance Director has been unable to properly reconcile the golf course inter-fund accounts knowing a contentious vote of Council would be based on their understanding of those fund balances then on what basis should we not assume other accounts are similar disrepair. Do we even know if the City’s bank accounts are being properly reconciled on a timely basis ?
Accordingly
Can Council be adequately discharging their Fiduciary responsibility knowing that established cash reports are no longer being prepared or submitted for review because the requisite underlying accounting is not being done either at all or in at least in an accurate enough manner for report preparation.
I would urge you to be in a position to properly advise Council regarding their Fiduciary responsibilities as these matters will be raised at Tuesday evening’s meeting.
Ted Noftall
for responsible government – 2016