Agenda
Transcript
SOURCE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is downloaded from the source you provided but we haven't reviewed it for accuracy. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record. You can also request an AI-transcription of the audio file with the button to the left.
[0:00]
meeting of the audit Committee on July 28th.
[0:03]
You know, to order. And city staff.
[0:06]
Can we have a roll call?
[0:09]
Vice Mayor Chow here. Here.
[0:11]
Here, here.
[0:17]
Super.
[0:19]
So everybody who's watching live
[0:22]
and in person, we've had a bit of a scramble here,
[0:27]
but we're excited to have our meeting and we will get started.
[0:33]
Are there any oral communications that you see?
[0:37]
Virtually? I don't see anyone in the room here.
[0:40]
I senior class originally and request person.
[0:44]
Thank you.
[0:45]
So we'll move to the consent calendar then.
[0:49]
And there's three items on our agenda in there.
[0:51]
And I have a bit of experience.
[0:55]
And we've got I didn't reduce the vice mayor here is
[0:59]
we're we're lucky to have a quorum.
[1:02]
And the vice mayor is representing Ray
[1:05]
Wong as a, as an alternate I think the way it works.
[1:08]
So thank you very much
[1:09]
for fitting us into your schedule so we can have our meeting here
[1:14]
and consent items, and we can ask questions if we have a question.
[1:18]
Otherwise, we know we can't deliberate unless we owe an item.
[1:22]
So I do have a question on the second item started, but I don't want to pull it.
[1:28]
I think it's a simple enough one in regard to Dennis,
[1:32]
thank you very much for adding page 16 of 33 in the PDF.
[1:38]
Dennis is a representative of PSU, US Bank.
[1:43]
Thanks for attending.
[1:44]
But page 16 is an attribution of.
[1:48]
I suppose, our
[1:52]
the city's different achievement versus the index,
[1:56]
and it's very nice to have that in there.
[2:00]
I wondered if as elucidating for a minute or two,
[2:03]
you could just explain a bit about how that table works.
[2:08]
And primarily there's an attribution on the.
[2:12]
The commodity
[2:15]
line shows a positive point 4 or 5% attribution,
[2:19]
even though both portfolios have a zero allocation to commodities.
[2:24]
And that maybe is a springboard for maybe briefly explaining
[2:29]
how that works.
[2:35]
Thank you.
[2:37]
The the simple explanation for that is by
[2:40]
is that.
[2:43]
In the old benchmark, we had to 2% allocation to the
[2:47]
to the commodity benchmark.
[2:50]
So if you look at the well let me walk you through this real quick.
[2:54]
Here's the benchmark composition in the upper left hand corner.
[2:57]
So for stocks
[3:00]
we use the MSCI All Country World index.
[3:03]
For bonds we use the Bloomberg Aggregate.
[3:05]
There's an S&P global REIT index for real estate.
[3:09]
And then that next one says S&P GSI.
[3:13]
That's the commodity index that stands for S&P
[3:16]
Global Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.
[3:19]
And then the last one is a three month Tea Bell index for the cash.
[3:24]
And remember the index idea of the index
[3:28]
is to is the best quote I ever saw was
[3:31]
it should represent the pond from which we are fishing for investments.
[3:35]
So it represents
[3:38]
the entire global
[3:42]
public investment opportunity set.
[3:47]
The next column you'll see is as of seven one of 26.
[3:50]
We have a new benchmark that's in your most recently updated investment policy.
[3:55]
It is very close to the old benchmark, just a tiny little change.
[4:00]
But the old benchmark is a second column.
[4:02]
And since that runs through June 30th.
[4:05]
That's the one we're using here.
[4:07]
So we're using a benchmark of 63% in a CIO country world index,
[4:12]
29% bonds, 5% rights, 2%
[4:17]
commodities GSI and 1% cash.
[4:21]
Now to answer your question, the reason.
[4:28]
It was beneficial is commodity
[4:30]
or performance down.
[4:35]
Dennis, I'm not sure we heard your complete sentence.
[4:38]
I might.
[4:39]
Could you repeat what you just said?
[4:40]
My my apologies.
[4:42]
Oh, sure.
[4:43]
The reason it was beneficial
[4:47]
to performance, to not own any commodities is because in the quarter.
[4:51]
And this whole chart right here is for the one quarter,
[4:56]
because during the quarter it would have reduced performance.
[4:59]
It would have detracted from performance if we had owned commodities.
[5:07]
So we picked up a little bit.
[5:09]
So so the way that let's go over
[5:13]
to the pension box, the way that the attribution report works,
[5:18]
is there's a column for selection.
[5:21]
And this is the effect on the performance
[5:25]
for whether or not you had,
[5:29]
you, you had investments in that, in that category.
[5:33]
And, and
[5:36]
did they the whole idea of selection, did
[5:40]
your selections do better than the benchmark or worse.
[5:44]
And so you can see what we do is for the top line there, the stocks we
[5:49]
we take the return of your stocks minus the return of the benchmark.
[5:54]
And you can see the selection,
[5:57]
the selection attribution on that top line was minus 0.31.
[6:01]
That means
[6:03]
that means the benchmark did a little bit better
[6:06]
than what we selected.
[6:09]
The next column is waiting.
[6:11]
And and that represents a did.
[6:14]
If you were overweight in an investment that did really well,
[6:16]
that would be beneficial.
[6:18]
And so if you were under weighted in a,
[6:21]
in an investment category that did very poorly, that would be beneficial.
[6:25]
And then the opposite of those two would be a detraction.
[6:30]
There's an interaction component.
[6:34]
I'm not going to get into the math of that.
[6:36]
But then there's a portfolio total.
[6:38]
And that portfolio total is the stocks in your portfolio
[6:43]
did a little bit below what the stocks in the benchmark did in total.
[6:47]
So -0.23%.
[6:50]
If you add up that column portfolio total
[6:53]
it comes to 0.26 or 26 basis points.
[6:58]
And then if you go down below under total portfolio
[7:01]
return for the quarter, you'll see net return was 10.11%.
[7:05]
For the portfolio.
[7:06]
The benchmark was 9.85, the variance was 0.26.
[7:10]
And so that box up there explains the variance.
[7:15]
So good news is we outperformed the benchmark just a little bit.
[7:20]
And then the box shows how.
[7:22]
And to kind of some this up in plain language
[7:26]
I put a little paragraph down below slight positive.
[7:29]
And this applies to
[7:30]
both portfolios by the way because they're managed almost identically.
[7:35]
Slight
[7:36]
positive variance in the quarter from both bonds I'm sorry.
[7:39]
From bonds.
[7:40]
Due to high yield exposure, the benchmark does not include high yield exposure.
[7:45]
The portfolio does.
[7:46]
So there's a little bit of a mismatch intentional mismatch.
[7:49]
And it paid off in the quarter.
[7:53]
Real estate did the real estate portfolio
[7:58]
total number was was positive nine basis points.
[8:02]
And global infrastructure we did a little better there.
[8:06]
So that was additive stocks slightly underperformed.
[8:12]
Performance of stocks was helped however by our allocation to small cap
[8:16]
which is not in the index
[8:19]
then.
[8:21]
I mentioned in here large stocks were up 15%.
[8:25]
Small stocks were up 21.
[8:27]
So that's why it was beneficial to have some small stocks.
[8:31]
Detracting from stock performance was our slight underweight to emerging markets.
[8:36]
So the benchmark for stocks is the MSCI All Country World Index.
[8:42]
I'm replicating that with several mutual funds one for US
[8:46]
stocks, one for developed foreign stocks, one for emerging foreign stocks.
[8:51]
And my my percentages are always a little off
[8:55]
because it's very difficult to replicate that.
[8:57]
Exactly.
[8:59]
And so that explains
[9:01]
why we're off the benchmark just a little bit.
[9:04]
Nope.
[9:05]
I think that's that's great.
[9:06]
Dennis I just wanted to highlight your question.
[9:09]
My question you've answered fully and I wanted to highlight it.
[9:14]
Thank you very much.
[9:15]
And I expect that we'll we'll have many more
[9:18]
chances to interact with this in future quarters.
[9:22]
So thanks again for working it through for us.
[9:25]
Yeah. Any other questions?
[9:26]
You're verification on the consent items in ball screen.
[9:31]
Thank you.
[9:31]
I was wondering, Jonathan, if you had a chance to look at my
[9:36]
questions that I sent in regarding
[9:40]
having the ones whose teen and OPEC
[9:44]
have pretty much the same percentage in equities.
[9:50]
So the I think that one of the questions that you had is,
[9:54]
is there a shorter horizon for pension versus OPEC?
[9:59]
In short, I don't think there's necessarily
[10:01]
because you're looking from the perspective of a retiree.
[10:05]
Right.
[10:06]
Pensions kind of would be long term right.
[10:09]
Same thing with OPEC.
[10:10]
However what the the use of those pensions versus
[10:14]
or how we were able to utilize a trust for the pension versus OPEC
[10:18]
could be strategic or strategically different from the OPEC perspective.
[10:22]
And I think you highlighted it is on a downturn of an economy.
[10:25]
If the the pension didn't perform well and to maintain a
[10:31]
in a desired
[10:33]
level of funding status, we can draw on that pension
[10:37]
and provide it to CalPERS to help pay
[10:40]
for our unfunded accrued liability or UAL.
[10:43]
Whereas with the OPEC, we can
[10:45]
and this is conversations that I've been having with Tina.
[10:48]
And a third party would be to assess our use it similarly.
[10:54]
But as of today we're a bit over funded.
[10:57]
So if we need to draw on it to assist
[11:01]
with a budget constraints. Right.
[11:04]
And so we can draw on that to help pay for our retiree benefits.
[11:08]
And so you can use them similarly, but for different purposes.
[11:12]
And there's different restrictions on both both in terms of reporting
[11:16]
and our financials.
[11:17]
And and but the method or the investment policies are essentially the same.
[11:24]
We have the same investment strategies for both.
[11:28]
Could you explain
[11:31]
if there was a downturn and CalPERS
[11:34]
wanted to raise our contribution to set.
[11:38]
Is that what happens there?
[11:41]
Helpers would have to it has to hit a certain
[11:45]
threshold before they can assess whether they want to change their
[11:51]
discount rate, which would then ultimately change how much
[11:55]
this each agency would have to be contributing,
[11:58]
because then in turn that also change your fund status.
[12:01]
Right.
[12:02]
And so but that that goes through a process
[12:05]
that needs to go to their board, they need to approve it and whatnot.
[12:07]
And then it gets kind of trickle down. And it's not immediate.
[12:10]
Usually there's like a two year period in which it goes into effect.
[12:14]
So it gives agencies enough time to to essentially shift a little bit
[12:18]
and kind of understand
[12:19]
how that adjustment to the discount rate will affect their funding status.
[12:23]
Okay.
[12:24]
And the other question I had was the $19 million jump
[12:29]
in the general fund of what was going on there.
[12:33]
There's actually I had Richard look into this for me.
[12:36]
And I have some some data points here, but I'd like him to take a stab
[12:40]
at this one first.
[12:41]
We're going to the treasure report there.
[12:45]
Yeah.
[12:45]
Item three on the consent calendar.
[12:51]
Richard. Hi.
[12:52]
Yeah. Hi, everyone.
[12:54]
So OPEC had an increase in 2.6 million
[12:58]
as far as from prior quarter and property tax.
[13:04]
The balance there is a total of 7 million
[13:07]
received in the fourth quarter.
[13:10]
And that's a 1.2 million increase from Q3
[13:15]
for sales tax.
[13:18]
We had a balance of 7 million received
[13:23]
in the fourth quarter, with a 1.1 million increase from Q3
[13:29]
and the annual excess receipt
[13:35]
came through in the fourth quarter.
[13:38]
And that was for 1.3 million.
[13:41]
And the last major receipt
[13:44]
we had to make up to 19 million is PG and franchise fee,
[13:49]
which is an annual receipt for 1.4 million.
[13:54]
So, in short,
[13:56]
there was about $40
[13:59]
million in revenue that the city generated last quarter versus
[14:03]
the $20 million just specifically for the general fund that IT expense.
[14:08]
Now, kind of we're starting to accrue back because we're at year end.
[14:12]
So some of those numbers are going to be
[14:13]
shifting a little bit as we kind of move away.
[14:15]
But from a cash perspective, we saw almost twice as much revenue
[14:19]
for that one quarter versus expenditures is the short.
[14:23]
So will that when it goes to the council.
[14:25]
Can that be added into the the report.
[14:29]
Okay.
[14:29]
Well we'll just the report to to reflect that that additional detail.
[14:33]
Great.
[14:34]
And thank you for adding the Cal fit I think it's in the under consent.
[14:39]
It is in the treasurer's at port.
[14:42]
Any other clarifying questions.
[14:46]
Yeah.
[14:48]
Being none.
[14:49]
Are there any comments from the public?
[14:53]
I see none in this room.
[14:57]
Chair I see no requests to speak and we have no requests in person.
[15:02]
Excellent.
[15:02]
Thank you for that.
[15:03]
So I would welcome a motion more.
[15:08]
I moved the consent calendar.
[15:11]
The second.
[15:13]
Excellent.
[15:13]
We got a second and we've got a motion.
[15:16]
I'm not going to repeat that.
[15:18]
Any further comments on the motion?
[15:21]
I let's take vote. All in favor?
[15:24]
I, I I unanimous of the three in the room.
[15:29]
And thank you very much and chair for the record, in addition to council
[15:33]
member Wong being absent, committee member Wong is also absent.
[15:37]
Oh, yeah. Thank you for that.
[15:41]
Okay, so moving on to new business.
[15:45]
Our item for is an informational item received the fiscal Year
[15:49]
20 2526 act for interim testing update.
[15:54]
And I think we're going to go right
[15:57]
to the pun group or introduced Richard will introduce.
[16:01]
Thank you Richard Wong.
[16:03]
Yeah. Hi.
[16:04]
So we are in your four of our five year contract with our external auditors.
[16:09]
The fund group or interim audit started in May.
[16:13]
And Sophia here, the pun group's assurance partner,
[16:17]
is here today to provide an update on our fiscal year 2526
[16:22]
act for interim audit testing and to answer any questions you may have.
[16:28]
Thank you.
[16:28]
Welcome, Sophia. Thank you.
[16:30]
Good evening.
[16:31]
Committee chair and then committee members, and also the city's management.
[16:36]
Again, this is Sophia from the group.
[16:38]
I'm the engagement partner for the city's audit.
[16:41]
And thank you for having me here today.
[16:44]
So, like Richard mentioned, I would like to give an update
[16:47]
on where we are at for fiscal year 2526 audit.
[16:51]
So he also mentioned we started the interview work back in May.
[16:55]
And with the focuses on the evaluating the city's internal control.
[17:00]
So over the significant transaction cycles that includes financial reporting.
[17:06]
So we evaluate the manual journal entry process banker
[17:09]
consideration process and also the city's budget process as well.
[17:13]
And also the revenue collection category C process procurement expenditures
[17:19]
as well as payroll and then HR related functions.
[17:23]
And again, we started the field work in late May,
[17:27]
and then we completed the we substantially completed our interim field work around
[17:34]
June time frame with no observations or findings to report.
[17:38]
And I also would like to take this opportunity to briefly discuss
[17:44]
the new Gatsby pronouncements that would be effective
[17:47]
for fiscal year 2526, and it will be impacting
[17:51]
the financial statements that will be presented to you in November.
[17:55]
And the first one is Gatsby 103 Financial Reporting Model improvements.
[18:01]
And the second one is guess we want for disclosure of certain capital assets.
[18:07]
So we have been working with the city's management
[18:10]
to determine the impact of these two Gatsby pronouncements.
[18:14]
The Gatsby 103 is a relatively higher than gas 104.
[18:18]
So the biggest changes, impacts on
[18:22]
or on the mDNA management discussion and analysis.
[18:26]
So because of the change, the city's management will need to rewrite
[18:31]
and reorganize the mDNA with only five components required by the standard.
[18:37]
So component number one is.
[18:39]
Overview of the financial statements
[18:42]
show how the financial statements flow through from fund statement to government.
[18:46]
Why and also the note disclosure and request commentary
[18:49]
information, supplementary information, how the financial statement look like.
[18:53]
And the second component is the financial statement summaries.
[18:58]
The third one is the detailed analysis of
[19:02]
the transaction happened
[19:03]
during the year, with a focus on the current year operations.
[19:06]
Instead of only focusing on the dollar amount or percentage changes.
[19:11]
The fourth component is the significant capital assets and long term financing
[19:16]
activities, and the fifth one is the currently known facts.
[19:21]
The session and long term and conditions such as the new labor negotiation,
[19:27]
if any, and also the maybe potential pension discount rate changes.
[19:32]
If that happens, it also needs to be discussed in the MDMA
[19:36]
and other than MDMA changes.
[19:39]
Another two significant changes from this pronouncements.
[19:43]
The first one.
[19:44]
Another one is the proprietary fund operating and non-operating
[19:48]
revenue expenses classification to present the statement
[19:52]
of revenue, expenses and changes in fund balance properly.
[19:57]
And another one is adding.
[19:59]
Adding a column on the budgetary comparison schedule
[20:04]
include including the variances between
[20:08]
original and final budget, and another.
[20:12]
Another change on the budgetary comparison special schedule
[20:17]
is to provide notes with the significant variances
[20:20]
on the original budget and the final budget,
[20:23]
and also the final budget and then the final result.
[20:26]
So to provide explanations why why those significant variances happen
[20:31]
during the year in terms of Gatsby 104,
[20:35]
the anticipated impact of Gatsby 104 on the city's financial statements
[20:40]
is expected to be minimal, but we will continue
[20:44]
to evaluate the implementation and then to determine
[20:47]
whether any potential impacts as part of our end the process.
[20:52]
So overall, we remain on track
[20:55]
to begin our year end fieldwork in late September,
[21:00]
which is consistent with our schedule in prior years.
[21:04]
Assuming that we receive the trial balance and also all the requested
[21:08]
audit documentation as planned, and there are no significant issue
[21:13]
during the audit, we anticipate to provide a draft
[21:17]
of the effort to the Committee for review due in the second half of November,
[21:23]
and so that we can meet and present
[21:27]
in late November, early December,
[21:30]
depending on everybody's availability.
[21:33]
And this will conclude my update for fiscal year 2526.
[21:38]
Audit.
[21:38]
I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
[21:42]
Thank you.
[21:43]
So let me ask the committee any anyone have a clarifying question?
[21:50]
I always have some.
[21:51]
But you guys get to go first.
[21:54]
Okay I'm curious with what they mean by.
[21:58]
And is it Gatsby 103 or 104 that wants to
[22:02]
have information about the original and final budget changes?
[22:06]
So which one is it and what does that actually mean?
[22:11]
So the original schedule, we we I mean,
[22:15]
the original schedule shows the original adopted budget and final budget.
[22:19]
And they there is a column for variance column.
[22:23]
Compare the final budget to the final result.
[22:27]
And then because of this new change, we need to add additional column
[22:33]
to show the variance from the original budget to the final budget.
[22:37]
During the year,
[22:38]
the city might have budget amendments and the year budget adjustments.
[22:42]
So this is a new requirement.
[22:45]
There is additional column need to be added to calculate
[22:48]
the difference between the original budget and final budget.
[22:54]
So it's not on the financial.
[22:56]
It's also on the presentation.
[22:59]
As I remember the MDA had quite a bit
[23:02]
on those changes anyways, didn't it Jonathan.
[23:06]
So this doesn't really maybe the city was providing
[23:10]
additional information that was was above the minimal requirements.
[23:15]
No, the MDA had various components that well,
[23:20]
historically was kind of followed a very somewhat rigid structure.
[23:25]
And so every year we would have to at least meet
[23:28]
those requirements at least to present it to give away and ensure that it's
[23:32]
to get the certificate of excellence or achievement.
[23:37]
So there as, as they stated.
[23:41]
So there's quite a bit of a difference as to how rigid the structure was to
[23:46]
what it's going to be now.
[23:47]
And there's just more
[23:49]
there's going to be more analysis rather than just telling a story.
[23:53]
Right. That's what we're there really want to.
[23:55]
Instead of saying these number changed from 10
[23:58]
to 15 million, look, well why why did it change.
[24:02]
And so that questions is going to be kind of further.
[24:05]
Why did something happen and why did that happen.
[24:08]
So the MDA is more of a storytelling
[24:12]
as to rather than kind of just strictly this number went to this number.
[24:17]
And so it's going to be quite a change from prior year.
[24:21]
So that's going to be a work in progress between here and in November
[24:26]
as far as kind of several
[24:28]
different iterations and kind of back and forth between staff and the auditors
[24:32]
to make sure that we're meeting the requirements as outlined by Geoffroy
[24:37]
or gasp, follow along.
[24:40]
So with that, include if you had like a change in revenue,
[24:45]
the two top two.
[24:46]
Explain that. Certainly.
[24:49]
Right.
[24:49]
Like fully.
[24:53]
So obviously it would be major changes.
[24:57]
I mean, if it's probably like a 10% change
[25:00]
for revenue, that's quite a change from year over year.
[25:03]
Now we I'm not sure to what extent do
[25:07]
we include budget to actuals in that situation.
[25:11]
But because that's as we know now, one of the biggest variants
[25:15]
is that we're going to see next year or last year is going to be sales taxes.
[25:18]
Right.
[25:19]
And I think kind of going into the detail, even though we don't
[25:22]
want to keep bringing up a it's still a kind of
[25:26]
we're seeing some of the, the how that's affected the city.
[25:30]
And it will continue to affect the city until we've kind of normalized it.
[25:34]
And it might take a couple more years before we see that.
[25:39]
But Sophia, can
[25:41]
you please answer which Gadsby pronouncement would require the city
[25:46]
to include the variance column in the budget to actuals or budget to.
[25:52]
This is Gatsby one of the financial
[25:55]
reporting model improvements?
[25:58]
Vice mayor, you've got questions.
[26:01]
So this item has no attachment.
[26:06]
Right.
[26:07]
And you mentioned the the presentation.
[26:10]
So if that available it's
[26:14]
just a verbal presentation or an update to the audit committee.
[26:18]
It's usually no written because it's a lottery formation.
[26:23]
I it would be nice to have a written update.
[26:29]
And because I can remember all
[26:33]
everything.
[26:33]
And then a very basic question.
[26:36]
So this update is a testing update for.
[26:42]
For internal control.
[26:45]
What exactly you are doing for testing.
[26:52]
So during
[26:53]
interim field work that's the like
[26:56]
I mentioned earlier, it's our internal control evaluation phase.
[27:00]
So it's based on risk assessment.
[27:02]
We identify significant transaction cycles.
[27:05]
And like so we evaluate the financial
[27:08]
reporting process that including how the city process bank
[27:12]
or conciliation and also how the city process cash receipts
[27:17]
and also the payroll, how it was done and
[27:20]
and also how the procurement was executed in all the way
[27:24]
to the invoice process and ultimately the cash the check cleared.
[27:28]
So that's the that's
[27:30]
that's what we call internal control and intern field interim field work.
[27:34]
So that's what we test.
[27:35]
We pick some or we got we got we
[27:40]
we got our population.
[27:41]
And then we pick samples and we and then we work with the city
[27:44]
to get the support to complete our testing.
[27:48]
Okay.
[27:50]
Okay.
[27:51]
My question is we've had a change in finance directors.
[27:56]
And congratulations to our new one who's sitting in the room here, Jonathan.
[28:01]
But I want to ask you, it's been a smooth transition, I presume.
[28:06]
Or you would have highlighted some some whatever
[28:10]
non smooth elements would have arisen.
[28:13]
I think we have, I have I personally have been working with
[28:17]
Jonathan since we started this contract and then the first year,
[28:22]
the first year because changing of new auditors and then
[28:26]
and of course and then there were some hiccup and then so the first year
[28:30]
it took a little bit longer than what we anticipated.
[28:33]
And then after after the first year, the second year went through is mostly
[28:37]
and I think even even with the transition and also
[28:41]
the change happened at the city are entering really, really smoothly.
[28:45]
That's why I can I can be here today to present.
[28:47]
And then there was really no fighting and no observations
[28:50]
from our internal internal control evaluation phase.
[28:53]
Great. Thank you. All right.
[28:56]
I don't see any comments from the public in the room.
[28:59]
Are there any virtual.
[29:01]
No thank you.
[29:02]
All right.
[29:03]
Why don't we move to a motion?
[29:06]
We don't actually have a motion.
[29:08]
I think this is an inclination item, so we'll accept it as an information.
[29:11]
I thank you so for.
[29:12]
And good luck on the rest of your work.
[29:15]
We'll see you in November. Thank you.
[29:19]
So on to item five on our agenda.
[29:22]
Also an informational item and a number of internal audit ones.
[29:28]
Here we're going to have in sequence.
[29:29]
This one is to receive the internal audit and the fraud waste
[29:32]
and abuse programs update. And
[29:36]
I guess Baker Tilly is going to go right in.
[29:38]
Or do we have a staff comment?
[29:41]
I think they can take that out. Great.
[29:43]
All right.
[29:45]
Wonderful. Well, I will get us started.
[29:47]
Great news looking at the grant management internal control review.
[29:52]
This is going to be presented to you all today.
[29:54]
This was the last item for fiscal year 2425.
[29:58]
And that has been finalized.
[29:59]
So really good news there.
[30:01]
So then looking at fiscal year 2526 internal audit program
[30:07]
the investment cash flow policy review recommendation.
[30:11]
So this is still going back and forth with city management.
[30:15]
I hope to have an update with you all in October on that one.
[30:19]
And then the citywide internal control review, this one.
[30:24]
We have been really busy at work, lots of different requests
[30:27]
going back and forth, but I do believe that we will have a report
[30:31]
to provide you all in the October time frame for that.
[30:35]
Of course, there is that ongoing internal audit services.
[30:39]
That's what we do.
[30:40]
Why I'm here today and also involves our fraud, waste and abuse hotline.
[30:46]
So going on to page number two, you will see that there were
[30:50]
no no complaints that were received this this time frame.
[30:55]
But we do have those eight open reports.
[31:00]
So I do want to say that those are still under the city attorney's review.
[31:04]
But I have met with the city attorney as well as the city manager,
[31:09]
and I think that there's going to be some new verbiage in the city
[31:13]
fraud and abuse policy that they're reviewing,
[31:15]
so that hopefully these are going to be closed soon.
[31:20]
Any questions before I move
[31:21]
on to the validation report?
[31:25]
I guess as a question,
[31:27]
it would be helpful for me if we could title
[31:32]
the second page fraud, Waste and Abuse report.
[31:36]
Okay.
[31:37]
And I don't know if that's inconvenient or whatever,
[31:40]
but a lot of these get posted on the website and it's not
[31:44]
maybe intuitive to people that aren't familiar with this,
[31:48]
that this is representing that we can easily get that fixed.
[31:52]
Thank you.
[31:53]
All right.
[31:54]
Any questions before moving on to the validation
[31:56]
report piece of our ongoing internal audit services.
[32:00]
Looks like we're good. Perfect.
[32:02]
If you could bring up actually the PowerPoint.
[32:08]
What what you'll find is there were no validation
[32:13]
or recommendations that we validated this quarter.
[32:17]
And so I thought it would be a good reminder to, you know,
[32:21]
why we're doing this process and really what this serves.
[32:40]
All right.
[32:44]
Perfect.
[32:44]
So going on to the second page, really what is this program.
[32:48]
And the thing that we involve the ongoing internal audit services.
[32:52]
So this is a crucial step in the audit process because
[32:56]
believe it or not, it breaks my heart to say this.
[32:59]
But sometimes reports are put on the wayside with management.
[33:02]
Right. So they get reports, they get recommendations.
[33:04]
And nothing comes out of this recommendations.
[33:07]
So this is a really great mechanism and tool for the city
[33:10]
to make sure that they're held accountable for making sure that they're effectively
[33:15]
implementing those corrective actions in the identified audit issues.
[33:20]
So what are we doing during this time?
[33:23]
We're always reviewing documentation and evidence provided
[33:26]
by the city to help remediate those recommendations.
[33:29]
We will talk to relevant stakeholders for clarification, any confirmation needed.
[33:36]
And we really assess what steps the city has taken
[33:39]
to make sure that they have made those recommendations.
[33:43]
And so once again, why do we do this?
[33:47]
Why is this a healthy practice?
[33:49]
It helps improve corrective actions, making sure everyone's accountable
[33:52]
and really supports
[33:53]
that continuous improvement that the city is always looking for.
[33:58]
So next slide.
[34:01]
So back in fiscal year 2526 we had 79 recommendations.
[34:08]
We have validated 54 recommendations in our time here with the city.
[34:14]
And there are still 25 that were open.
[34:18]
This is really important though because when talking to the city,
[34:22]
right before, we were going to provide this information to
[34:28]
for this audit committee, there are 16 open
[34:31]
recommendations that the city says that they have completed in July.
[34:35]
So I am really hopeful that next quarter,
[34:40]
I'm going to have a lot to report in this area.
[34:42]
So 16 recommendations, I mean, then we'll only have nine left
[34:46]
for this, this entire thing, which is great.
[34:50]
So next slide, this this kind of shows you those 25 open areas.
[34:56]
And like I mentioned we will have 16 remedied hopefully by the next quarter.
[35:04]
Any questions on that.
[35:07]
Any questions.
[35:09]
Comments. Great.
[35:11]
Yeah I'm excited.
[35:12]
I do have a question in terms of the
[35:16]
the the it's great news that the 16
[35:19]
that's unexpected from my side.
[35:23]
There's there's been some that are went back to 2022 or not.
[35:30]
My my question is I wonder if the 16 is going to address
[35:34]
all the really old ones or if it doesn't, if staff could work with you to
[35:39]
maybe figure out a footnote that would indicate
[35:43]
that maybe later in 2027, the really old ones, if there are any
[35:49]
that aren't covered by the 16 when they might get addressed.
[35:53]
And I think if you look at that last slide, and I'm sorry
[35:56]
to keep on doing that to you, Janet, but that last I just show
[36:00]
so staff did want to take that consideration.
[36:02]
I think that was something that you had mentioned last time.
[36:05]
And so the staff,
[36:06]
what they have shown you is the expected completion date by quarter.
[36:11]
So they're saying that by this did look new to me.
[36:13]
Yes. Yes.
[36:15]
So this will this kind of helps illustrate when those findings will be remedied.
[36:20]
So let's.
[36:21]
So if you could help me then dive a little deeper.
[36:23]
For example on this other detail report, there was four.
[36:28]
Well I don't want to go into the details, but there were five that were in 2022.
[36:32]
How would we use this report to see whether those are in the
[36:38]
16 or remain to be those?
[36:41]
You don't see that here, but as Chelsea was saying,
[36:45]
we can probably for about an updated report that kind of dials
[36:49]
in any outstanding of the nine potential ones that are still outstanding
[36:53]
what what period they, they're, they relate to.
[36:57]
And so you would see essentially this and with the that specific recommendation.
[37:02]
Fantastic. Yeah.
[37:03]
I think next time when an update is provided,
[37:07]
it will be great to have the list that's already verified
[37:12]
and especially the list that's open, because I don't know where
[37:17]
to start to even ask, because I don't know what these recommendations are.
[37:22]
And and also I do wonder
[37:25]
when we do a report, we do a recommendation
[37:29]
and we start to implement.
[37:31]
A lot of times we find out there might be adjustment
[37:35]
needed for for those recommendations.
[37:39]
So do you do those kind
[37:43]
of reevaluation in the middle of the implementation?
[37:48]
That's a great question.
[37:49]
So obviously processes things change right from a recommendation
[37:53]
from fiscal year 22.
[37:55]
So absolutely we're going to take that into consideration.
[37:58]
And I do believe Colleen please feel free to jump in here.
[38:01]
But I do believe that, you know,
[38:02]
sometimes a recommendation might no longer be valid.
[38:06]
And in that case,
[38:07]
that is something that we would just remove from the listing at that time.
[38:11]
Yeah. Correct.
[38:11]
A great example is if the city reorganizes
[38:15]
a recommendation related to a process or a responsibility might not be relevant.
[38:19]
So then we would close that and we would call it administrative closure.
[38:23]
But it would it would come off of the list for you all and it would be closed.
[38:27]
We wouldn't just close things kind of, hey, it's been too long.
[38:30]
Let's close it.
[38:31]
We want to work with the city on the appropriate answer,
[38:34]
but we definitely do take those things into consideration.
[38:38]
Ideally, everything is implementable and practical because we work
[38:42]
with staff on the front end, but things do come up over time.
[38:46]
Yeah.
[38:47]
So if there could be a list of validated recommendation,
[38:52]
but what do we have done for each of them?
[38:55]
That would be nice.
[38:57]
You're talking about column C column C.
[39:01]
Could you expand a bit on
[39:03]
I what your your suggestion is.
[39:06]
Sorry.
[39:07]
Like the recommendation of doing something and then maybe a comment
[39:13]
on what you have verified on the city have implemented. Yes.
[39:18]
So when, when we will have those we do.
[39:22]
And so so you know this quarter there wasn't any recommendations
[39:25]
that had been validated.
[39:27]
When this report is presented, when there are recommendations
[39:30]
validated they talk about what what had happened.
[39:34]
So what what was validated.
[39:36]
What were we able to validate
[39:40]
at that time.
[39:41]
So you mean if I look into a previous audit meeting, right.
[39:46]
That will be there.
[39:48]
Correct.
[39:49]
It'll talk about what
[39:51]
what what the actual recommendation was that we were able to validate my being.
[39:55]
Okay.
[39:56]
Might be nice if there is a cross-reference
[40:00]
like the last time the Valley, the recommendation
[40:04]
was at reported in the audit committee on that date.
[40:09]
That way people can look for it if they want to.
[40:13]
Okay.
[40:14]
And then it would be nice
[40:17]
for the oak to have a list of the open recommendations.
[40:21]
Yeah.
[40:30]
May we
[40:31]
have that report that the PowerPoint that you just shared?
[40:35]
I don't see it online.
[40:37]
Also, is there a landing page?
[40:40]
Would I find it under budgets to.
[40:43]
I remember that there used to be
[40:45]
the collection of all the Moss Adams Baker Tilly reports.
[40:49]
They were all together on some web page, but I know that we've reworked
[40:53]
the website, so
[40:56]
I don't know how to pull that up and see some of them.
[41:00]
Before.
[41:00]
We had our commissioner mayor meeting a couple of weeks ago.
[41:04]
So there is an internal audit section.
[41:06]
I'm not sure it's been completely updated.
[41:08]
So it's a great comment, mayor, how to get to that.
[41:11]
Maybe not all internal audit reports are posted there
[41:15]
because there been a number in 2026, and maybe there have been some reorganization.
[41:21]
Yeah.
[41:21]
If you go down below the audit plan there, there
[41:24]
and then the final reports, I think we might.
[41:26]
How do I get to that. No.
[41:30]
Yeah.
[41:30]
Usually the I will just mine didn't it didn't take you to it.
[41:34]
Go and click on finance.
[41:36]
Go to financial reports.
[41:37]
And then there's an internal audit subsection okay.
[41:43]
So if I landed on the main page
[41:45]
I'm starting on the main page of the website city
[41:52]
okay.
[41:54]
Then under finance
[41:58]
there city.
[41:59]
So if I just do a search on the city
[42:02]
home page for internal audit, I don't get that.
[42:07]
I get a bunch of yeah, sometimes search isn't the greatest.
[42:11]
So if you go to your yes, if you go to your city. Yes.
[42:15]
And then under departments you scroll down, you go to finance.
[42:19]
Couple more down there, we go down.
[42:22]
And then if you click a couple more over
[42:25]
there, there we are.
[42:27]
Okay.
[42:27]
So I was wanting to see the Baker Tilly report with all of these recommendations.
[42:34]
There was one that you had several maybe 30, 30 pages long.
[42:38]
And it was a it was a
[42:41]
all in a table, really small thought.
[42:44]
It's the blocks of recommendation.
[42:47]
I think it's the one that it would have all of these recommendations on it.
[42:53]
This one had a vast majority of them.
[42:56]
Yeah. This is a monster. Eat.
[42:58]
This is the era.
[42:59]
So I'm thinking that you're you're wanting
[43:02]
all the recommendations.
[43:05]
Pauline, do you know if we have
[43:06]
I don't know if we've provided a report with all the recommendations.
[43:10]
We keep track of them, you know, in our own database,
[43:14]
but we don't have a report
[43:15]
that we've provided the city with all those recommendations altogether.
[43:20]
Okay.
[43:20]
So so for instance, is I was looking, wanting to know
[43:23]
what the for old civil grand Jury
[43:28]
2022 recommendations are because I'm curious
[43:33]
if some of them have been just already fixed.
[43:36]
And it's been like four years
[43:39]
since that report came out and the people of all changed.
[43:43]
So I don't know where, like where can I find it,
[43:48]
but what the recommendations were
[43:51]
that may not have been part of the internal audit reports.
[43:55]
Is there a separate we tell you so at that time?
[44:00]
If so, for instance, if there were six findings
[44:03]
and two had been resolved at that time, we would tell you
[44:07]
that there was two resolved, but we wouldn't tell you the four
[44:11]
that would be open. So. Right. Colleen.
[44:13]
Right. This
[44:15]
honestly, that's is a it's a staff function to close the findings
[44:19]
and we track whether the the recommendations have been implemented.
[44:23]
So I think it will be up to staff
[44:25]
how much detail they would want to provide to you.
[44:28]
For example, the budget process review that we did once those findings, once
[44:34]
we have said they're validated, you could look at that entire report
[44:37]
and say, this is closed, but we can work with staff to provide
[44:41]
a little bit more detail in our presentation about what's remaining,
[44:45]
and it will be up to staff whether they might want to keep a master
[44:49]
log available to the public of the audit findings.
[44:53]
We show you in the report, kind of a high level,
[44:56]
because it would be a very, very long report with a lot of detail to have
[45:01]
the language of each recommendation provided and to keep that log over time.
[45:07]
So trying to get higher level for the committee.
[45:10]
Well, as a council
[45:12]
member, and we have members of the public who are not always supportive
[45:16]
of the council, that having that for items back from 2022
[45:22]
on this report could be used by
[45:26]
someone to come up to a council meeting and say, look,
[45:30]
there's four things that still haven't been taken care of from 2022.
[45:34]
And, and we'll we will know nothing about what
[45:37]
these four items are, which make us look really bad.
[45:40]
So I would like to be able
[45:44]
to kind of risk management
[45:48]
that that potential situation.
[45:52]
You can we've seen it before where these reports have been misused to abuse people.
[45:59]
So yeah that's completely understandable.
[46:03]
So we'll work with staff
[46:04]
on the format and content so that you have some more detail
[46:08]
without it being an overwhelming amount of paperwork
[46:12]
that then the city's got to print out and publish every quarter.
[46:15]
Yeah, yeah. And it's been it was.
[46:17]
So I'm really glad to see the language talking about the process improvement
[46:22]
here. And I think that's really important.
[46:24]
And we've turned around
[46:25]
a good number of, of, of the residents to view this as a positive.
[46:30]
And, but it has been used to both
[46:33]
insult the council and insult staff at times.
[46:36]
And so we want to get everybody on the same page
[46:40]
for the positive results that this is having on the city,
[46:45]
and try to limit those opportunities
[46:48]
for it to be mischaracterized.
[46:54]
So. So
[46:56]
originally there were 79 recommendations, right?
[47:00]
Correct.
[47:00]
So is there a document that I'm assuming that's a document
[47:05]
the council has approved with the 79 recommendations?
[47:09]
That would be every report that we issue
[47:13]
adds to the denominator of the recommendation.
[47:16]
So it's not a static number 79.
[47:18]
We probably started with fewer than 79 when we began the validation process.
[47:23]
And every every report
[47:26]
that is completed then adds additional recommendations.
[47:30]
So we validate and the percentage the number will change over time.
[47:34]
You'll keep updating the rates.
[47:36]
Oh, that's why it's hard to find one document that has all.
[47:41]
So for example, after the grant or grant management is presented to all
[47:46]
then we would add those to the list.
[47:49]
Does that make sense.
[47:50]
Oh I see.
[47:51]
So you'll probably see it at the very bottom
[47:54]
under under special revenue Fund progress process review.
[47:57]
You'll see another line 2026 grant management.
[48:02]
So it's not there yet.
[48:04]
But maybe in the next quarter you'll see that with the
[48:07]
x number of number of recommendations.
[48:10]
Oh I see okay.
[48:12]
This is a very helpful report.
[48:14]
Let me reemphasize because it includes not only internal audit.
[48:17]
It includes other recommendations for example
[48:20]
from the external auditor as I understand it.
[48:26]
So the special revenue fund process
[48:28]
or a single audit maybe the single audit is an example.
[48:33]
So this one, I believe it's still a function of the internal audit.
[48:37]
All these reports were provided by.
[48:39]
Okay. So I misunderstood that.
[48:41]
I thought this was there was a comprehensive report I get from you guys.
[48:46]
I thought that's got all the recommendations that you're tracking.
[48:50]
So it's only internal audit.
[48:52]
That's not correct.
[48:53]
This includes two grand jury reports
[48:56]
as well as a single audit finding that the city received in 2022.
[49:00]
So the single audit would be the external correct previous auditors.
[49:04]
And then the grand jury, of course, is the grand jury.
[49:07]
So that's what I thought this was a more comprehensive document.
[49:10]
Not that, you know, internal.
[49:11]
It's going to come up with most of the recommendations we would expect.
[49:14]
But so so what's the basis of capturing a recommendation
[49:19]
then since we've got three different sources right now,
[49:23]
it makes sense to me to have external audit.
[49:25]
Internal audit I guess I wouldn't have expected
[49:28]
a grand jury anyways, but so that's fine, I get it.
[49:31]
Is there are there any other sources that that you'd guys typically
[49:35]
look at when you go into a municipal situation or.
[49:40]
Sure, it's
[49:41]
great for us as a committee, this is great for us to see what's out there.
[49:44]
What's being looked at?
[49:45]
I think it's it's maybe we're not giving it as much credit as it deserves.
[49:49]
It's quite, quite a nice thing
[49:51]
to close the loop, so to speak, which I really like this report.
[49:55]
But any others calling that come to mind are we?
[49:58]
Is that the typical source of everything?
[50:01]
This is pretty typical.
[50:02]
This was a management decision at the time.
[50:04]
We established this program
[50:08]
to go back and include the grand jury reports.
[50:12]
We would typically include internal and external audit.
[50:15]
And if the city were to receive findings from another auditor, for example, HUD
[50:20]
or or another federal agency that came in, you could include those two.
[50:25]
Just for transparency sake, there was a decision made to include the grand jury.
[50:30]
I would say our clients are kind of 50 over 50 on whether they include
[50:34]
grand jury findings or not in this, but it does daylight,
[50:38]
whether the city is making movement on recommendations from external bodies.
[50:44]
And that's what the committee chose at the time.
[50:47]
And there was that reminds me that wasn't there a finding
[50:50]
in one of the grants during the Covid era that
[50:55]
so that was a special report from the external auditors, probably.
[51:00]
I think I do believe that 2022 single.
[51:03]
So that second to the bottom.
[51:05]
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Great. Okay. Yeah.
[51:08]
But I still yeah I think it's nice to include a grand jury,
[51:12]
but we had another civil grand jury report this year.
[51:17]
So would that be added?
[51:20]
I'm curious, but then I do think that we
[51:24]
we should have a document with all the 79 recommendations.
[51:29]
Even if they are being adjusted.
[51:32]
But I assume you do have that list somewhere, right?
[51:38]
Yeah.
[51:38]
We can work with management like we'll have we'll have an update.
[51:42]
I wonder maybe you could enter auditors could work with city staff
[51:46]
and come back with maybe a suggestion on how to handle it,
[51:49]
because there seems like there's a potential for a lot of material.
[51:53]
And we want to make sure we're getting maybe a summary report,
[51:56]
and then we can go into detail when we see something.
[51:58]
And you've also raised the issue with maybe the public has a different interest
[52:02]
than this committee.
[52:04]
So possibly one solution to address what you're talking about
[52:08]
is you guys could come up with a proposal for us next,
[52:12]
next quarter in conjunction with this report to say how you would handle
[52:17]
or I'm just throwing it out because as a committee,
[52:21]
we may or maybe it doesn't have to be one.
[52:25]
Just to clarify, it doesn't.
[52:27]
You don't have to create a whole new document for this.
[52:31]
Just that would be nice to have a list of 79.
[52:34]
And then maybe it's five different documents
[52:37]
and then just say, okay, if each one is from which document,
[52:41]
then at least there is a place people can look for information.
[52:46]
That's good enough.
[52:48]
Mayor, you have thank you for mentioning the civil.
[52:52]
And so this year we had three Cupertino named in three.
[52:58]
So the first was with regards to remote
[53:02]
teleconferencing convenience versus compliance.
[53:05]
We had a VTA one and then potholes.
[53:10]
So unfortunately we've got three more to add
[53:13]
and we've been working on the first one.
[53:15]
We're we're working on all three.
[53:17]
The first one is really in process,
[53:20]
and we'll ultimately get into our council procedures manual.
[53:27]
We'll have to have a discussion about that probably in November
[53:31]
to make some adjustments there,
[53:34]
but I guess it would get added
[53:36]
on to your reports list.
[53:40]
Perhaps.
[53:40]
Maybe it comes back to my question of clarification,
[53:43]
which was, can we maybe have a little text on the bottom
[53:47]
that says reports, what is the universe of total recommendations?
[53:52]
And it comes from, I guess we're saying the past
[53:56]
the decision was civil juries,
[53:59]
internal audit recommendations, external audit recommendations.
[54:03]
And that way everybody knows those are city staff.
[54:06]
Then when internal audit may not be aware of everything, city
[54:10]
staff would have a triggering process to identify these.
[54:16]
I'm not thinking of a very
[54:18]
extensive, but some kind of note on here that I never thought of would be helpful.
[54:22]
I didn't realize there was a decision made in prior years, for example.
[54:26]
So that's helpful to to know that we're continuing the work
[54:29]
of prior committees that we can build on.
[54:32]
Okay.
[54:32]
I think we should move on from this item probably if we can.
[54:36]
Any other burning questions or we got our stuff addressed
[54:41]
so we could vote to
[54:43]
or to recommend that we no longer include the civil
[54:47]
grand juries here because that's being handled at a council level.
[54:51]
And then it's kind of duplicative if we're analyzing
[54:55]
and having a consultant analyze the same civil grand jury,
[54:59]
let's see if there's any comments from the public.
[55:02]
And then we can maybe go to a motion.
[55:05]
Even though this is an informational item
[55:09]
chair, I see no request to speak.
[55:11]
Fantastic.
[55:12]
I'm thinking, you know, maybe we could talk some more and have a motion.
[55:16]
Or we can.
[55:18]
Whatever you take direction from, it sounds like a great idea to,
[55:23]
you know, address what we're going to include on this, reaffirm
[55:27]
what's been in here in the past or remove.
[55:29]
So it could be a nice time to do that.
[55:32]
City staff have any comments on your opinion?
[55:36]
Ultimately this is a report that goes to the audit committee.
[55:40]
So if you all want to remove or include additional by including,
[55:45]
maybe it's the external audit findings if there are any.
[55:48]
So which I think would be more relevant right.
[55:51]
For this body. Right.
[55:54]
We can certainly do that.
[55:56]
Yeah, I can see lots of other committees or institutions
[55:59]
that maybe make complaints.
[56:01]
So I don't know that this is appropriate for us necessarily.
[56:04]
Colleen, do you have some experience?
[56:06]
And you said some cities do add civil jury comments.
[56:09]
So is that widespread, do you think anecdotally or.
[56:13]
It really depends on how
[56:16]
how grand jury complaints are handled.
[56:19]
I would agree with the mayor's comment that because these are handled
[56:22]
at the council level, it is a little bit redundant.
[56:25]
It just depends on how you all want to handle it.
[56:29]
But typically the council says here's how we plan to respond.
[56:33]
Management implements comes back to council and says we responded this way
[56:38]
and then we would validate at the same time.
[56:43]
Right.
[56:43]
So I'm getting rid of redundancy.
[56:46]
I'm all in favor of I mean I don't vice mayor,
[56:51]
I don't think we had control over what was being done at that time.
[56:56]
I think all.
[56:58]
Oh yeah.
[56:59]
And it was used as a tool that I really I didn't
[57:04]
I really didn't think it's bad to include the civil grand jury
[57:09]
because it's nice to see oh four was invented and for still open.
[57:14]
I'm curious what still open.
[57:16]
But on the other hand, not all the recommendation from grand
[57:21]
jury has to do with audit or finance.
[57:26]
Right.
[57:27]
For so does it make sense to include recommendations
[57:30]
that may not have to do with findings?
[57:34]
And also a lot of times
[57:37]
not a lot of that be some 50%.
[57:40]
I think of the recommendations we disagree with.
[57:44]
So it doesn't mean they because the grand jury, civil grand jury
[57:48]
consists of people who have never been elected official.
[57:52]
They make recommendations, but then they don't even know how city works.
[57:56]
And so I don't think there.
[58:01]
Is always a good recommendation.
[58:05]
So I don't know if these eight are those eight that's reasonable
[58:12]
that we have accepted or
[58:15]
that's directly from the grand jury.
[58:19]
So that's what be my concern with
[58:23]
taking an external recommendation
[58:26]
without our own validation,
[58:30]
whether those recommendations are suitable for corporate.
[58:34]
You know, I think that goes to my observation.
[58:37]
It's typically these kinds of reports
[58:38]
or stuff this committee has input or control over.
[58:42]
And so internal audit reports into both the city Council
[58:47]
and the audit committee is the way that structured.
[58:50]
And in the same way basically for the external auditors.
[58:53]
So it makes perfect sense to me that this committee would have
[58:56]
input on the reports coming back to the committee,
[59:00]
whereas we have no real direction with the.
[59:05]
I could see where the city attorney has input, I would hope or expect
[59:09]
on these kinds of things, but that we would we would get input from
[59:13]
either the external auditors saying this is a significant enough issue.
[59:17]
It shows up in the Akbar, and you guys could be aware of it,
[59:19]
or we see it in the footnote or internal auditor does a project
[59:25]
and then brings it up for us, but separately.
[59:28]
I mean there's we could probably imagine other organizations that have comments
[59:34]
maybe coming
[59:34]
to the city that we have no real
[59:38]
it doesn't seem to fit within our purview, but I can see where it could.
[59:42]
We extend it in.
[59:43]
City Council says, why don't you watch over it?
[59:45]
So I'm happy to have a motion that clarifies what we think this is.
[59:50]
We can either do it through city staff consulting with maybe the city attorney
[59:54]
can get involved or whatever you think, or we can
[59:57]
we can take a vote here and just say, let's let's stick it with internal audit
[1:00:01]
and external auditors, which are reporting directly
[1:00:04]
to this committee and other groups that don't.
[1:00:07]
Okay.
[1:00:07]
So I'll make a motion that we remove
[1:00:12]
civil grand jury recommendations from this report.
[1:00:16]
And then if there is any financial
[1:00:20]
related issue that's recommended from,
[1:00:24]
we will rely on, I think this council,
[1:00:28]
the city manager or city attorney will can refer them to the internal auditor,
[1:00:35]
who can then recommend an appropriate way to integrate those
[1:00:40]
into the city's.
[1:00:42]
Process
[1:00:46]
more. Second. Yeah.
[1:00:48]
And I like here I don't want to talk about issues here and the council.
[1:00:53]
I don't want to talk about VTA here and council
[1:00:57]
or even the council procedures manual or not to go through that.
[1:01:00]
It's very redundant.
[1:01:02]
People can come to the council meeting and make their input there rather
[1:01:06]
than taking a more precious time of it, so I agree.
[1:01:09]
Yeah.
[1:01:09]
Well, maybe like show me the money, maybe that item is relevant to this committee,
[1:01:14]
and then I'm sure that the staff will bring that to the committee.
[1:01:20]
And together with Baker City.
[1:01:23]
Yeah.
[1:01:24]
My input on this might be first.
[1:01:26]
I can ask again the city staff or I think the city manager's office
[1:01:30]
is represented in our committee here as well.
[1:01:33]
But again, to me it's what does this committee have authority over?
[1:01:38]
And I'm happy to take responsibility for, for things.
[1:01:41]
But I didn't realize this was a decision maybe that had been in scope
[1:01:45]
a number of years ago.
[1:01:50]
I personally, all the things you said, I'm
[1:01:52]
not sure we can rely on the city staff bringing us issues.
[1:01:55]
I think that's part of the nice loop being closed here.
[1:01:59]
There's a formal report given by the external auditors
[1:02:02]
or internal auditors, and they have recommendations.
[1:02:04]
And we're going to go soon to a new item that's got a series of them.
[1:02:07]
And then they get on this report and then they're either
[1:02:09]
addressed, city staff either agrees with them or they don't.
[1:02:13]
And then at some point
[1:02:14]
there's a resolution, whereas things we don't have control over it.
[1:02:18]
I don't see how this loop gets closed easily.
[1:02:20]
Only be we simplify the motion to just say we remove the grand jury report.
[1:02:27]
I love city Council wants to put it back in our view or something.
[1:02:31]
They can pick and choose and direct items.
[1:02:33]
So you're withdrawing your first your main motion.
[1:02:36]
This is the new motion.
[1:02:38]
The new motion that we remove civil grand jury
[1:02:43]
recommendations from the audio recommendation report.
[1:02:48]
More tracking report. Yeah okay.
[1:02:51]
And then we've got a motion and we can discuss it.
[1:02:56]
Now again I'd like to clarify that that motion is because we're clarifying
[1:03:02]
what this audit committee has purview over as we understand it.
[1:03:06]
Okay.
[1:03:07]
So can I amend the motion to say that we are removing civil grand jury
[1:03:13]
recommendations from the audit recommendation tracking report
[1:03:17]
because it's not in the preview of this committee?
[1:03:22]
Yeah, it's closer to what I, what
[1:03:24]
I also would you like the political the motion.
[1:03:28]
I'm just looking at
[1:03:30]
the moment.
[1:03:31]
Well maybe I always throw my motion.
[1:03:33]
You can.
[1:03:34]
No no no no no no, that's not what I mean.
[1:03:37]
I think just simply lying on the fact that, like, if there was a report like,
[1:03:41]
show me the money that the council if while we're talking about it,
[1:03:45]
we could direct staff to bring this to the audit committee if we felt
[1:03:50]
that the audit committee had some input, that that would be helpful.
[1:03:55]
Yeah.
[1:03:57]
Something is, but that does not need to be part of the it's
[1:04:00]
just what the council is willing to do.
[1:04:04]
Yeah.
[1:04:05]
So it's a motion clear.
[1:04:07]
I do believe it's clear.
[1:04:08]
It's just just to add a bit to it
[1:04:12]
in its later on our agenda
[1:04:14]
is the internal audit work program.
[1:04:17]
Seeing that that is going to council in September, maybe that's the opportunity
[1:04:21]
council can take to add a civil grand jury
[1:04:25]
report to the validation as a follow up or as a work program
[1:04:30]
item to ensure that that that one that it's been seen through.
[1:04:35]
So if there is a civil grand jury report like show me the money, right.
[1:04:40]
It's maybe it's
[1:04:41]
within the purview of this body to review and make sure that it's been addressed.
[1:04:45]
And maybe the council can make that decision at the time
[1:04:49]
when we take the work program for consideration.
[1:04:55]
Okay.
[1:04:55]
But we can still
[1:04:56]
be making that recommendation to the council about this at this time.
[1:05:00]
Yeah. Okay.
[1:05:01]
Well, I think we can remove it
[1:05:03]
if we choose from this report, but doesn't want to if we get.
[1:05:05]
No, I'm just saying for future. Right.
[1:05:07]
If you let's say we remove them now from all future reports,
[1:05:12]
if there is a future civil grandeur report that you want
[1:05:16]
Baker, Tilly or internal auditors to ensure that it's been validated,
[1:05:20]
we can include it
[1:05:21]
as part of that validation process or during that, the annual review of our.
[1:05:26]
You mean have that emerged at this level?
[1:05:29]
You're saying?
[1:05:31]
I would say probably from the direction from council down.
[1:05:36]
So that is the same as what I was.
[1:05:39]
Okay, okay.
[1:05:40]
Where am I at? I guess we've got a motion.
[1:05:43]
You may I clarify that accepted the child committed motion.
[1:05:49]
Can you read it back?
[1:05:50]
Amendment is purview of the.
[1:05:53]
Because it is not within the purview of the audit committee.
[1:05:56]
I wasn't sure if it's not a committee
[1:06:01]
recommendation tracking report
[1:06:03]
because it's not in the purview of the committee.
[1:06:06]
It may not be
[1:06:08]
then if it wasn't, then why have you been doing it?
[1:06:12]
If it wasn't in our purview while we were doing it?
[1:06:14]
So I would I would question if that was.
[1:06:20]
And it seems to be more of an observational statement
[1:06:23]
rather than the motion.
[1:06:26]
I mean, the reason for the motion.
[1:06:28]
Yeah. Yeah.
[1:06:29]
And I'm not entirely sure
[1:06:31]
because it's been our practice that we've been doing this.
[1:06:33]
Why are we now saying that?
[1:06:35]
It's not
[1:06:36]
I think it's important to include that in a motion for chairs recommendation.
[1:06:42]
That was clarify is not within the purview of the committee
[1:06:47]
before I heard the mayor's comment, which makes perfect sense as well.
[1:06:50]
Unfortunately, I certainly not. But
[1:06:55]
I honestly
[1:06:56]
think maybe we could handle this in another way, which is, again,
[1:07:00]
I'm not trying to push it off
[1:07:01]
into a committee, but possibly internal auditors and staff
[1:07:05]
can go back in consultation with all the various parties
[1:07:08]
that and ask
[1:07:11]
what should be the scope of the total recommendation column.
[1:07:16]
And we can take that choice with a motion here,
[1:07:18]
or we can ask further input, I guess
[1:07:23]
I connect there an appetite
[1:07:26]
to the front of the amendment, even though I question it.
[1:07:30]
Okay, so you accept
[1:07:33]
a friendly amendment to add this
[1:07:36]
because this is not in purview of the audit committee, right?
[1:07:40]
So do we want to amend that to also include the
[1:07:44]
the chairs comment about
[1:07:48]
direct staff to bring back
[1:07:53]
the universe of
[1:07:57]
reports that we are taking
[1:07:59]
to for the total recommendations?
[1:08:02]
I'm happy with that. Yeah.
[1:08:05]
Okay.
[1:08:06]
Accept
[1:08:08]
that may not want to.
[1:08:09]
It's okay.
[1:08:12]
But I make a quick suggestion.
[1:08:14]
Yeah, please.
[1:08:14]
We're working as a team here, I know that I know that the committee charter
[1:08:20]
is not maybe set in stone at the moment,
[1:08:24]
but it would probably be easily covered if the motion just referenced.
[1:08:29]
Reports that are under the purview
[1:08:33]
of the committee as outlined in its charter or directed by council.
[1:08:36]
So that would cover, for example, if a grand jury report came to council,
[1:08:41]
there were items that you wanted to refer to, the audit committee,
[1:08:44]
you could do that in the the required responses to the grand jury,
[1:08:48]
and that would cover the the universe without us then being able to
[1:08:54]
put everything into the tracking report that could possibly be relevant.
[1:09:00]
Yeah, I like that wording. Actually.
[1:09:01]
I think for the motion it's not defining what the universe.
[1:09:07]
It's asking directing the staff to make a recommendation to the committee.
[1:09:13]
Here is what we should consider.
[1:09:15]
And the staff can then say, okay, the universe
[1:09:19]
is per the charter of the committee, right?
[1:09:23]
So that's okay.
[1:09:26]
Right?
[1:09:26]
I don't think we need to modify the motion.
[1:09:31]
I think what Colleen said
[1:09:34]
sounded very succinct and to what I was driving at.
[1:09:39]
So I'm I don't mean to be okay knowing here.
[1:09:45]
Could you repeat that?
[1:09:46]
Yeah, possibly.
[1:09:48]
Pauline. Sure.
[1:09:49]
It would be
[1:09:52]
limited to tracking recommendations that are within the under
[1:09:56]
the purview of the audit committee, per its charter or as directed by council.
[1:10:01]
Yeah, I accept that.
[1:10:03]
Yes. Good.
[1:10:05]
So that substitute motion more second actually.
[1:10:08]
Yeah.
[1:10:08]
We've had a nice discussion.
[1:10:10]
Have that I like this motion a lot.
[1:10:13]
Any other final comments? Let's take a vote.
[1:10:17]
Oh sorry.
[1:10:18]
I shall move the substitute motion.
[1:10:22]
Good question.
[1:10:22]
I'm the substitute motion.
[1:10:24]
There were two amendments, right.
[1:10:27]
And more second.
[1:10:28]
Those three amendments.
[1:10:30]
First is purview and secondly is at direction to staff.
[1:10:35]
And that direction was amended.
[1:10:38]
So there were three amendments on the on the asset.
[1:10:43]
The second motion. Well you could also
[1:10:47]
you could also just
[1:10:49]
have to type all that out. Yeah. All right.
[1:10:52]
Just just make a new motion that include all that.
[1:10:55]
So which you prefer removes the name notion again and then just have this.
[1:11:01]
So this will be the main motion.
[1:11:03]
So and it'll probably read better in the minutes that you don't
[1:11:07]
want.
[1:11:08]
We'll just do a substitute motion
[1:11:13]
which include the second motion with the three amendments.
[1:11:18]
No no no no we want to
[1:11:20]
you want to withdraw your main motion which had all those amendments.
[1:11:23]
Okay.
[1:11:24]
You're you're going to create a new main motion
[1:11:27]
with Colleen's simplified, limited to tracking the recommendations
[1:11:32]
of the audit committee per the charter or by direction of Council,
[1:11:36]
the simplified one.
[1:11:37]
And just put that in and then in the meeting minutes,
[1:11:40]
because you don't have to put the original motion in the minutes.
[1:11:44]
You just have this one. Don't need
[1:11:47]
that okay.
[1:11:48]
So cows moving in more
[1:11:51]
and remove the civil grand jury recommendations
[1:11:54]
from the audit committee recommendation tracking report
[1:11:57]
limited to tracking recommendations that are within the
[1:12:02]
under the purview of the Audit Committee, per its charter
[1:12:05]
for as directed by counsel.
[1:12:09]
Is that should that
[1:12:11]
include direct staff to bring back the no.
[1:12:14]
Okay. That's okay.
[1:12:16]
Well we probably all that now okay. Yeah.
[1:12:18]
So the previous motion was withdrawn.
[1:12:21]
So you don't need to put that.
[1:12:23]
Thank you.
[1:12:24]
Save all the time for the minutes.
[1:12:27]
All right.
[1:12:28]
Let's take a vote on that as
[1:12:31]
just stated.
[1:12:32]
All in favor are I opposed?
[1:12:36]
No. It's unanimous of us here.
[1:12:37]
Thanks, everyone. I think we came to a nice resolution.
[1:12:39]
And you can put that as a footnote down here on our report.
[1:12:42]
Whatever our motion was that we so succinctly have in the minutes now.
[1:12:47]
Great.
[1:12:48]
I think we're still at the point where,
[1:12:52]
well, I guess we're finished with this item.
[1:12:54]
This was an informational item on which we corrected or we made a motion.
[1:12:58]
So thank you for the presentation.
[1:13:03]
I went a little longer than I anticipated, but now I think we're
[1:13:06]
into the next part of your presentation, which is item six.
[1:13:10]
Yes. Which has received the grants management internal control review.
[1:13:14]
Final report. Yes.
[1:13:16]
Yeah. So this is really exciting.
[1:13:18]
I'm going to go to the executive summary just to kind of point out
[1:13:22]
some of the highlights of the report.
[1:13:23]
And then I'll open the floor for questions.
[1:13:25]
So you know this was really to assess the internal controls over
[1:13:31]
grant management activities for the city, really looking
[1:13:35]
specifically for compliance with policies and procedures
[1:13:39]
as well as best practices.
[1:13:42]
So we really looked at the application, the review,
[1:13:47]
the administrative and reporting processes related to grant management processes.
[1:13:52]
This actually took place in June through October of 2025.
[1:13:58]
So that's important just to remember that, you know, some of these recommendations
[1:14:03]
might have already been mitigated by the city,
[1:14:06]
you know, thinking about how
[1:14:09]
how much total grants the city has, it's pretty substantial.
[1:14:13]
So looking at, you know, fiscal year 24, for example,
[1:14:17]
25% of the program revenues related to grants.
[1:14:22]
So this is a very material balance
[1:14:24]
for the city and something that's really important.
[1:14:28]
So going down
[1:14:30]
to the second page you will see that
[1:14:33]
we do like to highlight things that are going really well.
[1:14:37]
And the city is doing really well.
[1:14:39]
I'll call out a couple of these.
[1:14:41]
So one you know looking at departments,
[1:14:45]
it looks like they have really organized folders for all this information,
[1:14:49]
grant documentation, making sure that it's recorded
[1:14:53]
that they have the record retention rights on it, as well as audit readiness,
[1:14:57]
which is so important, as you know, for your,
[1:15:00]
you know, external auditors as well as when pesky internal auditors come.
[1:15:05]
So really nicely done.
[1:15:07]
Also another one to highlight segregation of these really appear to be in practice
[1:15:11]
in invoice reviews approvals, reducing that
[1:15:15]
risk of errors or unauthorized transactions,
[1:15:18]
which is something to really highlight for the city.
[1:15:21]
And also, you know, there are the appears to be really good
[1:15:25]
hand off lists to help mitigate controls.
[1:15:28]
You know, if there was any risks of staff turnover, you know,
[1:15:32]
everyone has an understanding of what needs to be done in this process.
[1:15:36]
So great job to the city.
[1:15:39]
But like you know, most cities there are some opportunities for improvement.
[1:15:45]
And if you go to page number three, this lists out
[1:15:49]
nine areas that I wanted to highlight in the report.
[1:15:53]
But obviously there's details below and there's other recommendations below.
[1:15:57]
So looking at these high level, you know really making sure
[1:16:01]
to have standard grant management policies and procedures and continuity plans.
[1:16:07]
So we talk about,
[1:16:08]
you know, really having that hand off to maintain grant management activities.
[1:16:13]
What if there is staff absences, transitions, that sort of thing,
[1:16:16]
making sure
[1:16:17]
that there is a centralized grant opportunity identification and monitoring.
[1:16:21]
So when we were looking at multiple departments within the city,
[1:16:26]
there were sometimes different ways
[1:16:30]
that different departments are identifying and monitoring these grants.
[1:16:34]
And so really having a holistic approach across the city
[1:16:37]
really helps make sure everyone is an under agreement
[1:16:40]
and the process is continuous throughout
[1:16:43]
a couple other things, making sure that everyone,
[1:16:48]
you know that there's segregation of duties across departments.
[1:16:51]
So we did see, you know, some areas that had great segregation of duties,
[1:16:55]
others, you know, that might have staff
[1:16:59]
staff issues, not have enough staff, that sort of thing
[1:17:02]
that could lead to the potential of, you know, some segregation of duty issues.
[1:17:07]
Looking at this again,
[1:17:11]
just making sure that there's consistent internal control,
[1:17:14]
internal reviews and approval processes for grant reporting.
[1:17:17]
As you all know, grant reporting can be very cumbersome.
[1:17:21]
And there's a lot of different things.
[1:17:23]
So making sure that, you know, the city really is crossing the T's
[1:17:28]
and dotting the eyes, so to speak, in making
[1:17:31]
sure that they are doing the appropriate grant reporting.
[1:17:36]
It's a lot of information.
[1:17:38]
And so I think to really make the best of your time,
[1:17:42]
I'll open up for any questions or comments that you all have.
[1:17:48]
Why don't we do around here
[1:17:50]
any clarifying questions from the committee members?
[1:17:56]
I'm kind of wondering how,
[1:17:58]
but one of the, one of the problems that we see that grants are being
[1:18:03]
applied for, and then we kind of find out about that after the fact.
[1:18:10]
And has that been improved upon, like.
[1:18:17]
For instance, there was a grant for.
[1:18:20]
It was some artificial intelligence
[1:18:25]
virtual reality program, and it was about $100,000
[1:18:30]
that was given to the city to create this VR.
[1:18:33]
You have the virtual reality headset, but that didn't it didn't like
[1:18:38]
go through the council and it and it got kind of put on to like a
[1:18:44]
work program, special project.
[1:18:47]
But all the money came from outside.
[1:18:49]
Did use some staff time.
[1:18:50]
But is there something in the process now that would be different
[1:18:55]
so that that could rise to the level of getting to the council,
[1:18:58]
because that's
[1:18:58]
a substantial amount of money, and then the city is supposed
[1:19:02]
to be continuing, like using this VR thing.
[1:19:07]
It was the one with decarbonization
[1:19:11]
of your house, with your changing out your appliances and stuff.
[1:19:14]
And it had Cooper in it.
[1:19:15]
I don't know if you ever tried it out. So.
[1:19:17]
So there was one for McLellan wrench, and that's another one
[1:19:23]
that was much smaller. There is another one.
[1:19:25]
I didn't know that. Yeah.
[1:19:26]
So they're supposed to have it out, like at our festivals and whatnot
[1:19:31]
for people to check out to last year in might have been two years ago.
[1:19:37]
Oh, yeah.
[1:19:38]
So you put on the virtual reality
[1:19:40]
headset outside in the library field for the green.
[1:19:44]
What is that?
[1:19:45]
Oh, you need the it needs a headset to work, right?
[1:19:49]
Right.
[1:19:49]
And you would see Cooper, and then you would be asked,
[1:19:52]
you know, like, where can you make changes and give different questions about.
[1:19:56]
You'd be walking around a house and changing out the appliances for like
[1:20:01]
a gas
[1:20:01]
stove for something, their induction heating type of thing.
[1:20:05]
That's as an example.
[1:20:07]
So is there anything in the system that would keep that from happening?
[1:20:13]
And maybe what I add to it.
[1:20:16]
So the there is and we just took this
[1:20:20]
to council a month or two ago is the grant policy.
[1:20:23]
And so it kind of provided some guardrails as to what would be going to council.
[1:20:27]
And I think if I were correctly one of the the
[1:20:31]
emphasis on what would be taken or the pursuit of grants
[1:20:35]
is the amount of staff time required to essentially to pursue.
[1:20:40]
And so it's the short of what of what what kind of what it boils down to.
[1:20:44]
So if it's going to be heavy staff time to to pursue this.
[1:20:49]
The idea is it would go to council for approval.
[1:20:52]
Now if it's nominal or it's essentially not much.
[1:20:57]
I think that the pursuit of the grant would not require it to go to council.
[1:21:01]
However, I think there are some thresholds that would require council
[1:21:04]
to approve the grant and one of the other bits,
[1:21:09]
and you'll see it as one of the findings is it ultimately would also require
[1:21:13]
the city manager's approval or their designee on any grant.
[1:21:19]
So can we maybe use those as case study.
[1:21:24]
And so these are the grant in the past.
[1:21:28]
And whether the new policy how would the new policy would apply for this?
[1:21:34]
I think that would help us to understand
[1:21:39]
how the new policy would work,
[1:21:42]
maybe whether any adjustment is needed.
[1:21:47]
One one more area.
[1:21:50]
So the SV hopper, they and I don't know if this I don't
[1:21:53]
recall it going to council, but there has been an application
[1:21:57]
for two different kinds of grants to extend that.
[1:22:01]
But I don't recall us having a discussion about it on the on the council agenda.
[1:22:06]
And those are significant amounts of grants.
[1:22:08]
And, you know, I'm pretty sure it's over $1 million.
[1:22:13]
Then we can organize our, our, our comments here in
[1:22:18]
I guess some of them are process related.
[1:22:21]
And there's some recent development, I guess was the policy that would
[1:22:24]
Jonathan's referring to.
[1:22:26]
Is that part of your incorporated?
[1:22:28]
Did you finish this study before that? Yes.
[1:22:31]
So if you look, our very first finding was around policies and procedures,
[1:22:35]
and I think that was an administrative policy,
[1:22:37]
Jonathan, that you have been working on, is that correct?
[1:22:40]
No, that one was a council council policy.
[1:22:43]
So we we have not reviewed this like I mentioned,
[1:22:46]
this, this report actually, you know, we finished our testing
[1:22:50]
and the report was the draft was initially in October of last year.
[1:22:55]
So it's been a while since we have worked on this area.
[1:22:59]
What I want to say, we do have a follow up, you know,
[1:23:03]
when we get to the next fiscal year, internal audit work plan
[1:23:07]
for this type of thing, which is kind of what I would maybe into to the extent
[1:23:11]
you've done a certain amount of work and there's a number of recommendations.
[1:23:15]
And when I look at the city staff response, it's basically
[1:23:19]
since this report was finished
[1:23:20]
or the work was done, there's been a grants analyst been hired
[1:23:24]
who presumably is doing all kinds of policy and implementation things.
[1:23:29]
And that leads into this, I guess, proposal that we have
[1:23:33]
in the next agenda item.
[1:23:34]
So we're sort of
[1:23:36]
what I'm trying to do is figure out how we can take the benefits
[1:23:40]
of what we see in front of us, but then recognize we've got another item
[1:23:43]
potentially where we could address some of the.
[1:23:46]
Almost both of your questions in
[1:23:50]
some sense, are like follow ons to the scoping of that follow on project.
[1:23:55]
So sounds to so how do we.
[1:23:57]
I don't know if you guys see where I'm going here,
[1:23:59]
but we've got we can get rid of this item I don't want to say get rid of,
[1:24:02]
but how does city city staff is responding saying basically there's a new person
[1:24:06]
in all of these recommendations are being reevaluated.
[1:24:11]
Is that correct?
[1:24:13]
I feel somewhat I think that's the general
[1:24:16]
or at least our position
[1:24:19]
that the
[1:24:21]
that the new grants analyst has addressed, or that there's a process in place
[1:24:25]
that addresses most of these levels, think we could accept this item.
[1:24:29]
And then on the next agenda item drew in more deeply
[1:24:33]
as to what follow on items makes sense.
[1:24:36]
I'm curious that this says it's an action
[1:24:39]
item and six.
[1:24:43]
It seems more informational, right?
[1:24:45]
But I'm also wondering so this is going to go to council.
[1:24:49]
So the staff report should have some mention
[1:24:53]
about how this report was generated at this time.
[1:24:57]
And the city's already been implementing the recommendation.
[1:25:00]
So the things the original report.
[1:25:03]
Yeah that's it's important.
[1:25:05]
But we've made excise changes so that the council doesn't get confused by it.
[1:25:11]
And then also include that grant policy
[1:25:13]
to as a reminder that we had already done that.
[1:25:17]
So maybe we should have an item that says what you just said as our
[1:25:24]
we handle this sometimes through a staff report.
[1:25:26]
And Jonathan could include that the committee
[1:25:28]
discussed this report, received it and forward it to city council.
[1:25:32]
But with the caveats that the mayor has just listed.
[1:25:36]
Have a question for the consultant?
[1:25:40]
Okay. Clarifying questions. We're still on those actually.
[1:25:42]
And then I don't let me forget we got to go to the public.
[1:25:45]
So from.
[1:25:46]
So this report was down last year.
[1:25:49]
And I do wonder
[1:25:53]
how did you collect information to create this report.
[1:25:58]
For example, those issues with grants were have observed.
[1:26:03]
And it seems you are not aware of those.
[1:26:07]
So I wonder what kind of process
[1:26:11]
you had used to create this report.
[1:26:15]
Maybe there are people
[1:26:18]
you should have interviewed but you didn't show.
[1:26:24]
Maybe the report should even be
[1:26:28]
delayed so
[1:26:29]
you can collect more complete information
[1:26:33]
before making this recommendation.
[1:26:36]
Do you want me to take a step up or do you want to?
[1:26:39]
You can you can start and then I can okay, I can add my $0.02.
[1:26:43]
I have two other examples of things didn't work before.
[1:26:47]
So this the testing period was again at the beginning of fiscal year 2526.
[1:26:53]
And that's what they tested. But since then
[1:26:56]
or concurrently, there were some changes occurring within the city.
[1:27:00]
One with the the with the hiring of the grant analyst.
[1:27:05]
And so as the report was being generated, being
[1:27:10]
essentially circulated within the city for review,
[1:27:15]
which was delayed a bit due to staff turnover and the review process.
[1:27:19]
So that's what delayed the report itself.
[1:27:22]
And so it still retained the original testing period.
[1:27:25]
But changes had already begun. Right.
[1:27:27]
And that was part of the our response.
[1:27:30]
You only tested
[1:27:33]
any grants that's being applied
[1:27:36]
for during those periods or being
[1:27:41]
not necessarily applied but reviewed.
[1:27:43]
Right.
[1:27:44]
It could be a combination of grants that were in progress.
[1:27:48]
Right.
[1:27:48]
If we're like CDBG, that's a year round and continual grant.
[1:27:52]
Right.
[1:27:53]
And so as they're testing that
[1:27:56]
we could be early on in the year, may or may not have a lot of invoices,
[1:28:01]
but if it's a grant that's kind of
[1:28:03]
crossing a specific time period, they could be testing that that way.
[1:28:07]
So again, their testing period was a couple months, right?
[1:28:11]
That they're only looking at one specific time.
[1:28:13]
But there could be other things more different.
[1:28:16]
And the report was generated based off of that testing window.
[1:28:20]
So if there were things happened before that testing window
[1:28:25]
and that we
[1:28:29]
we need a policy recommendation
[1:28:32]
for those grants, they cannot they are not included.
[1:28:36]
So how can we include those in
[1:28:40]
is it possible to revise the report to include.
[1:28:47]
Things that we think could be improved on.
[1:28:50]
And they have a revised report.
[1:28:53]
So a couple of things I want to remind you.
[1:28:56]
This report is not even from this past fiscal year.
[1:28:59]
It was from the fiscal year before that.
[1:29:01]
So really we're looking at an item that was from fiscal year 25.
[1:29:05]
So I agree with Jonathan.
[1:29:08]
This is a report and a, you know, a point of time.
[1:29:12]
And we really need to move forward and think, you know,
[1:29:15]
what is the future for the city?
[1:29:17]
I think, you know,
[1:29:18]
I do think that what your comments are valid, and I think
[1:29:21]
that I would really lean into that next agenda item,
[1:29:25]
which is talking about our internal audit plan for 27.
[1:29:29]
And you can be specific in maybe that scope of work
[1:29:33]
and saying, you know, these are specific.
[1:29:36]
Not only do we want you to follow up on the findings of this,
[1:29:39]
but there are specific other areas that council or this committee,
[1:29:44]
you know, is concerned with that we would like to include in that scope
[1:29:48]
and that be a new report for the next fiscal year.
[1:29:53]
And I guess in
[1:29:53]
the chime in on that, there is a description in this report
[1:29:57]
that you're asking us to complete receive today
[1:30:03]
on pages four and five that talks about your scope and methodology.
[1:30:07]
So maybe that addresses some of the vice mayor comments,
[1:30:12]
even though I agree that we should be looking at what's the current
[1:30:15]
situation, what the current analyst and what do we expect would be helpful
[1:30:20]
for city's internal controls or operations from a future perspective?
[1:30:25]
So I'd suggest that we received this report and maybe leave it at that.
[1:30:30]
And city council city staff can have do whatever because they're not forwarding
[1:30:34]
at the city council necessarily as our action item and then dive
[1:30:38]
right into the next item on our agenda, which will address maybe more deaths.
[1:30:43]
What you're bringing up, Vice Mayor,
[1:30:45]
I think it does say in the executive summary.
[1:30:52]
That the internal control review took place
[1:30:56]
between June and October 2025.
[1:31:00]
That's a very short amount of time.
[1:31:03]
So if your testing is only for those few months.
[1:31:08]
So of course it's not going to capture
[1:31:13]
the problems we have seen over the years and the
[1:31:16]
you would not have captured things we need improve on.
[1:31:20]
Right.
[1:31:21]
So that actually so that's how long the project took place.
[1:31:25]
So the scope of our project was for fiscal year 25.
[1:31:30]
So the project only we worked on this project
[1:31:35]
from June 25th through October of 2025.
[1:31:40]
But the scope so what the grant management process
[1:31:44]
that we looked with in the city was for fiscal year 25.
[1:31:48]
So it was for a year
[1:31:51]
or so before 2025.
[1:31:54]
So it's one year, a snapshot of one year
[1:31:59]
from July 2024
[1:32:02]
to June 2025.
[1:32:06]
That's correct.
[1:32:07]
That's not clear from your executive summary.
[1:32:12]
Okay.
[1:32:15]
I would kind of suggest
[1:32:16]
that we could form a subcommittee to talk about
[1:32:20]
to test the grant concerns against the new policy,
[1:32:24]
and what result would happen now
[1:32:27]
if if those were being suggested or pursued,
[1:32:32]
what would be different with a new policy
[1:32:35]
and just do that as an offline project?
[1:32:39]
So yeah.
[1:32:40]
So I'd like to mention two other
[1:32:44]
major grants that
[1:32:47]
the city staff apply to.
[1:32:50]
Maybe the subcommittee can consider.
[1:32:53]
I don't want a country short because those are super ideas
[1:32:55]
that really would fit better.
[1:32:57]
Maybe in our work plan or in the next item.
[1:33:02]
Seven both.
[1:33:03]
Both of your comments, I think, are very relevant for those two items.
[1:33:07]
Maybe a way to solve this.
[1:33:09]
One is the read in the staff response to just about every one
[1:33:13]
of the recommendations, based on
[1:33:17]
what this period was covered, is basically
[1:33:20]
there's been a grants manager hired that is now everything is superseded.
[1:33:26]
So I hate to say it, but it's the time has progressed forward
[1:33:29]
and we didn't get this report or it couldn't be finalized or whatever.
[1:33:32]
So to some extent we could receive this report and highlight that management.
[1:33:38]
Management's response is
[1:33:41]
that there's all kinds of policy and personnel changes
[1:33:47]
and that we as a committee.
[1:33:48]
Then my response to that is, let's address that in item seven and eight,
[1:33:53]
that your motion, because it's I don't know, get a motion necessarily.
[1:33:57]
It's sort of clarifying the reception of the report.
[1:34:00]
But we could yeah.
[1:34:01]
If you want to make a motion so moved.
[1:34:03]
Okay.
[1:34:04]
Is there a second which would be me
[1:34:07]
I knew motion so I can second pair of seconds.
[1:34:11]
I would like to request a change though
[1:34:14]
on the executive summary didn't make it clear.
[1:34:18]
This is a review of only the fiscal
[1:34:21]
year 2025, which is on
[1:34:26]
from June from July 2024.
[1:34:30]
It's not a review of all of the grants management.
[1:34:35]
So if we can make that clear in the title of the report
[1:34:38]
and then in the executive summary of the report, then I can accept it.
[1:34:43]
Otherwise I think it's confusing.
[1:34:46]
Vice mayor, it's in the first paragraph is actually a summary
[1:34:49]
on the first page.
[1:34:53]
It just says that the review took place
[1:34:58]
during that time, but it didn't say the data
[1:35:01]
they used for the review is for fiscal year 2025.
[1:35:07]
They only look at the grants that's being processed
[1:35:10]
or in progress during those times.
[1:35:13]
Okay, so I think it's super clear, but.
[1:35:21]
I didn't say a review of One Year of Rent.
[1:35:25]
I think it's clear to because there's a lot of scope.
[1:35:28]
And again, I really want to put this in the mirror.
[1:35:31]
So I guess we
[1:35:35]
we don't have any public comment.
[1:35:37]
We skipped over that and went to a motion
[1:35:39]
I just to get our little procedural thing going.
[1:35:42]
We didn't skip anybody because there was no one who had raised their hands.
[1:35:45]
So I think we have a motion and why don't we just vote on it and see where it goes?
[1:35:51]
So all in favor of the motion chair?
[1:35:54]
I'm sorry.
[1:35:55]
May I the motion.
[1:35:56]
And also I just wanted to clarify.
[1:36:00]
So okay, let me just read what I.
[1:36:03]
Yeah.
[1:36:04]
To receive the grants management internal control review final report
[1:36:08]
with the understanding that the management's
[1:36:10]
response notes that subsequent policy, personnel
[1:36:14]
and organizational changes have superseded many of the report's findings.
[1:36:19]
And to address those changes further under item seven and eight,
[1:36:23]
I think that reflects, Jonathan.
[1:36:25]
You have a slight modification. Yes.
[1:36:27]
And not just just seven. Correct.
[1:36:30]
Okay.
[1:36:31]
Okay.
[1:36:32]
Mayor, is that reflective of what?
[1:36:34]
Yeah, I think so.
[1:36:35]
So is the is the committee making a recommendation
[1:36:39]
to forward the report to council or is that automatic?
[1:36:42]
Well, it's not automatic and it is in our recommended action.
[1:36:46]
But we can always modify our action.
[1:36:47]
But I'm happy to forward it based on this motion as a clarifying
[1:36:52]
thing.
[1:36:53]
So why don't we vote on the motion first and then address.
[1:36:57]
Do you want that in the motion is what you suggest I guess.
[1:36:59]
Well it's part of the recommended action is money clarity if you want to vote
[1:37:02]
if you want to, and the to
[1:37:06]
amend the motion to forward the report to city Council.
[1:37:09]
Great.
[1:37:10]
But I so second agree or whatever that's required.
[1:37:12]
All right.
[1:37:13]
All in favor of that is so nicely reread to us.
[1:37:16]
I and he opposed oppose okay.
[1:37:20]
And there's only three of us so okay.
[1:37:23]
Very good.
[1:37:24]
And I appreciate the patience and discussion on this that there's
[1:37:27]
a lot of issues that we brought up.
[1:37:29]
And I see that we're running a bit later than I anticipated.
[1:37:32]
Can we.
[1:37:33]
Is everybody available to maybe address seven.
[1:37:37]
And I don't want you to have to come up third day.
[1:37:43]
It's a city staff.
[1:37:45]
Can we stay for a little bit longer while we go into item seven or.
[1:37:50]
We don't need that.
[1:37:51]
It's not like counselor.
[1:37:52]
Yeah. Motion. Just keep going, okay? Okay.
[1:37:55]
I still, I am sensitive to the clock and we can always defer that we have that
[1:37:59]
I have that authority I guess.
[1:38:01]
So let's move on to our item seven action item
[1:38:04]
20 2627 Internal Audit Work program review.
[1:38:08]
And we'd like to receive that and forward to City Council as our action item.
[1:38:13]
And over to Baker Tilly.
[1:38:16]
Thank you.
[1:38:17]
All right.
[1:38:17]
This is very exciting talking about what we can do for the next fiscal year.
[1:38:21]
So just a reminder of what we do at Baker Tilly.
[1:38:25]
We serve as a designated internal auditor for the city.
[1:38:29]
And we're really focusing on these areas risk, internal controls,
[1:38:34]
efficiency and effectiveness, best practices and then compliance.
[1:38:38]
Our work is always completed under the appropriate industry standards.
[1:38:43]
So that IEA looking at government accounting standards as well as the AICPA.
[1:38:51]
All right.
[1:38:51]
So what what is the role of an internal auditor.
[1:38:55]
I think this is always something really important to look at.
[1:38:58]
You know, we are an independent function that really helps
[1:39:03]
kind of look at the achievements and objectives of the city.
[1:39:06]
And so if you look at this, this, you know,
[1:39:10]
illustration, it's showing you how we have communication
[1:39:13]
with both the governing bodies.
[1:39:15]
So city council this audit committee here as well as management.
[1:39:20]
And so it really shows that there is that third communication
[1:39:24]
and then all the communication lines really making sure
[1:39:28]
that we are separate from your external audit.
[1:39:31]
And so, you know, you see that at the very right hand
[1:39:35]
side of this illustration showing that, you know,
[1:39:38]
your external assurance providers.
[1:39:40]
So for your external auditor,
[1:39:41]
the punk group, they are separate from this, this action.
[1:39:47]
So going into our internal audit program,
[1:39:50]
how do we come up with an internal audit program to present to you all today?
[1:39:55]
There's many components.
[1:39:57]
You know, the enterprise risk assessment, which we do, you know,
[1:40:01]
every 3 to 5 years getting input
[1:40:05]
from employees and residents, as well as performance metrics for cities.
[1:40:10]
We also look at general opportunities.
[1:40:12]
So risk controls compliance and performance.
[1:40:16]
And then last but not least that tracking and reporting.
[1:40:19]
So that validation report that we talked about earlier today
[1:40:22]
looking at those findings and recommendations, the Fraud
[1:40:26]
and Abuse hotline, that would be another thing
[1:40:29]
looking at implementation that the city is,
[1:40:32]
you know, has been doing as well as that validation that we talked about.
[1:40:36]
So that is those inputs really make up
[1:40:40]
our internal audit program and what we present to you all.
[1:40:45]
So this is just another illustration kind of talking.
[1:40:48]
Just again what we talked about just now looking at the internal audit program
[1:40:53]
and really just how it umbrellas all the different
[1:40:57]
components as well as city functions.
[1:40:59]
So we're not just looking at the finance department.
[1:41:03]
We look at other areas, other departments within the city.
[1:41:06]
So a really holistic approach just to kind of highlight what has the city done.
[1:41:13]
You know, we've had two enterprise risk assessments.
[1:41:16]
So both in 2021 and 2024.
[1:41:20]
We are currently in a citywide
[1:41:23]
internal control review that we talked about earlier today.
[1:41:26]
And we've also had some performance.
[1:41:29]
So looking at the efficiency and effectiveness.
[1:41:31]
So those performance audits we've had five over the years policies reviewed.
[1:41:38]
We have looked at over 147 policies to remind you,
[1:41:43]
we did a city council review this past fiscal year, as well as we are
[1:41:48]
looking at the investment cash flow policy also with the city.
[1:41:53]
You all know this.
[1:41:54]
There is, you know, some recommendations delivered.
[1:41:57]
I look at this number and I can tell you it is incorrect because we know now
[1:42:01]
that 79 also includes
[1:42:04]
the external audit as well as the civil grand jury reports.
[1:42:09]
So that is not correct.
[1:42:10]
But we have delivered, you know, many recommendations.
[1:42:16]
And there have been 39 ethics hotline reports received over the years.
[1:42:22]
And, you know, in fiscal year 26, we were able to validate
[1:42:27]
seven recommendations.
[1:42:29]
So kind of an idea of what we do with our time.
[1:42:36]
This also just kind of shows you the different departments.
[1:42:38]
And like I mentioned, it's not just looking
[1:42:40]
at the finance department or the administrative services as a whole,
[1:42:45]
but really we have dabbled in public works, we've done enterprise projects.
[1:42:51]
So looking at, you know, the enterprise risk assessments, internal control review,
[1:42:54]
city manager's office and public works over
[1:42:57]
our time.
[1:43:01]
Next are right.
[1:43:03]
So this is the the big discussion item.
[1:43:08]
So these are the potential projects
[1:43:11]
that we have identified for this fiscal year.
[1:43:16]
What I will say is that
[1:43:20]
we have $120,000 currently budgeted in this fiscal year.
[1:43:26]
We are bringing forth right now $230,000 of projects.
[1:43:30]
So obviously there's some pick and choose or, you know,
[1:43:34]
if there's other other potential products or projects that this committee
[1:43:38]
wants to bring up or identify for management.
[1:43:42]
That's obviously open as well.
[1:43:45]
So first one code enforcement.
[1:43:47]
So the 311 response time review.
[1:43:49]
So evaluating the city's code enforcement complaint response process,
[1:43:54]
really focusing on response times staffing availability and service delivery
[1:44:00]
a property tax review.
[1:44:02]
So inventory property tax revenues and compared to relevant legislation
[1:44:07]
and agreements to identify opportunities to improve the understanding
[1:44:11]
of those distributions, county service delivery and intergovernmental funding.
[1:44:18]
So there has been also talks about the investment cash flow review.
[1:44:22]
So you know that this past the school year we looked at the actual policy.
[1:44:26]
So taking that policy and looking at the current processes
[1:44:30]
that the city has and making sure that those align with the policy,
[1:44:34]
making sure that it's, you know, cohesive and fluid in efficiency study.
[1:44:41]
So evaluating the efficiency
[1:44:43]
and effectiveness of the city's permitting process, really identifying
[1:44:47]
opportunities to streamline workflows, reduce
[1:44:50]
process times, customer service
[1:44:53]
and overall service delivery that grant management follow up.
[1:44:58]
Something that we kind of talked about.
[1:44:59]
So this you know, this one we had really scoped around looking
[1:45:04]
at those individual recommendations from that report and really digging deeper
[1:45:08]
into making sure that the city had completed those recommendations.
[1:45:12]
You know, obviously, room for suggestions by vice mayor about potential,
[1:45:18]
you know, other opportunities for that scope, the recruitment and retention study
[1:45:23]
that's really assessing the city's recruitment and retention practices,
[1:45:26]
it really identifying opportunities to improve hiring efficiency,
[1:45:31]
the and really the city's ability to attract and retain
[1:45:35]
those qualified employees and making sure that there's long
[1:45:39]
term organizational stability for the city.
[1:45:43]
The last
[1:45:44]
two, that's the program management and recommendation validations.
[1:45:48]
Those two kind of go hand in hand with each other and or really what we do
[1:45:53]
on a quarterly basis with you all, as well as looking at the fraud
[1:45:58]
and abuse hotline and validating those recommendations
[1:46:01]
when it comes time.
[1:46:06]
Thank you
[1:46:06]
for the introduction to the report.
[1:46:10]
And we we've all had well, we've all reflected on these.
[1:46:14]
Comet.
[1:46:15]
My introductory introductory comments here are.
[1:46:20]
Internal audit is a key function that the city hasn't
[1:46:23]
had prior to six or so years ago.
[1:46:27]
I think it's a fundamental element, I think within
[1:46:32]
a good, good practice for cities.
[1:46:35]
And it was a response in part to the deportation and embezzlement
[1:46:40]
that occurred.
[1:46:41]
And so it in my memory
[1:46:45]
and very happy to see that there is an internal audit function.
[1:46:48]
So it's not limited only to the financial elements
[1:46:51]
that Baker Tilly has pointed out here.
[1:46:54]
It's also can be operational.
[1:46:56]
So that's very exciting as well.
[1:46:59]
My clarifying question after my introduction is how much input
[1:47:04]
did were you taking from prior audit committee discussions
[1:47:10]
over the past year or and or city staff input?
[1:47:15]
That's a great question and definitely looked at,
[1:47:19]
you know, what we have talked about reflected
[1:47:21]
what we've talked about over the past year here at the audit committee.
[1:47:25]
We also met with Jonathan and his team, as well
[1:47:29]
as the city manager's team as well, to kind of talk about those inputs.
[1:47:33]
But, you know, thinking about the overarching
[1:47:36]
looking at the enterprise risk assessment, that's a huge tool that our team uses to
[1:47:40]
help utilize what would be really relevant,
[1:47:42]
what are potentially high risk areas that we had identified,
[1:47:46]
you know, prior years that the city might want to look into
[1:47:51]
their clarifying questions.
[1:47:54]
Question.
[1:47:55]
Well, so trying to prioritize this list
[1:48:01]
because this this is not this is put in order of the cost almost.
[1:48:06]
Or were you trying to share this as a priority or how did it end up?
[1:48:10]
You know, I would say it's I don't think that there's any priority.
[1:48:16]
It was just kind of a list of projects.
[1:48:18]
And I don't think we really even have a it's not any order
[1:48:22]
other than the last two are kind of things that we
[1:48:26]
we have to have program management so that one and then the validation
[1:48:30]
or recommendation validation is something that the committee in the city
[1:48:34]
has always encouraged.
[1:48:36]
Okay. And we're budgeted at 120,000.
[1:48:39]
But we can go we can go higher than that.
[1:48:42]
And then council can knock some things off.
[1:48:44]
I'm wondering with the investment cash flow review,
[1:48:48]
if staff feels comfortable with the cash flow policy that we have right now.
[1:48:53]
Because I saw that you did like you moved the money to get it down
[1:48:56]
to the 5 million in that operating account and you're using it.
[1:49:01]
So to me, it's this is a problem that you are
[1:49:05]
have have kind of for the present time.
[1:49:10]
It's kind of solved in my opinion.
[1:49:11]
So I would say no to that one.
[1:49:14]
Do you have a thought on that.
[1:49:15]
Is that something.
[1:49:16]
But or for this list, are there things that you strongly
[1:49:20]
interested in because I can come up with for that, like permitting 311
[1:49:25]
property tax and recruitment that that I would be interested in.
[1:49:30]
I'm not sure if the recruitment part is, is particularly necessary
[1:49:36]
at this particular time, because we've just had a lot of
[1:49:41]
a number of hires, but the permitting,
[1:49:44]
we hear a lot about that, a lot about three, one one.
[1:49:48]
And then the property tax review,
[1:49:52]
I can I can share
[1:49:55]
what this is about.
[1:50:00]
Which is
[1:50:01]
because it has to go to our sheriff's contract.
[1:50:05]
We're well.
[1:50:08]
But it goes into the tariffs contract and trying to figure out
[1:50:13]
the actual numbers that are coming to the city, because I'm able to estimate.
[1:50:18]
But I need help with some of these because the property tax embed
[1:50:22]
some other taxes in it and sales
[1:50:24]
tax, it's not super clear where it's all getting distributed.
[1:50:28]
And and I don't want to be when we're doing our negotiations saying falsehoods.
[1:50:35]
The county.
[1:50:37]
But I am saying that they get over 100 million from Cupertino each year.
[1:50:42]
And that's something that we need to have.
[1:50:44]
It can't be. I'm generating this number.
[1:50:47]
That's which is why I, I would definitely support
[1:50:50]
looking at the property tax distribution item,
[1:50:54]
but were there some favorites in in the list?
[1:50:58]
Yeah, I will say that the recruitment and retention study, that was something
[1:51:02]
that the city manager's office or city manager had requested current.
[1:51:07]
Okay.
[1:51:07]
And I think three three, one one and permitting were also pretty
[1:51:12]
strong contenders is so I,
[1:51:18]
I wonder whether for property tax review.
[1:51:27]
Is this a corporate
[1:51:29]
for the Baker Tilly to do this study or.
[1:51:33]
It's something really our
[1:51:37]
lobbyist lobbyist has been doing that study. No.
[1:51:42]
So they don't.
[1:51:43]
So the Baker Tilly has this expertise
[1:51:47]
study property tax.
[1:51:50]
So Colleen I'm going to lean on you on this one.
[1:51:53]
Sure.
[1:51:54]
So we do have folks in our public sector
[1:51:57]
financial operations group who can provide advisory on this.
[1:52:01]
I would say from an internal audit perspective.
[1:52:04]
We actually talked about this with the chair last week.
[1:52:07]
It's right on the line because it deals with policy
[1:52:10]
a little bit more than it deals with maybe
[1:52:14]
operations or the type of work that internal audit typically does.
[1:52:18]
And so while we do have the capability to do the work,
[1:52:22]
we want to be pretty careful,
[1:52:23]
as your internal auditor about how the information is used.
[1:52:27]
And we also need to be a little bit thoughtful.
[1:52:31]
The county of Santa Clara is not currently a Baker Tilly client,
[1:52:35]
but the housing Authority, I believe is.
[1:52:38]
So we want to be thoughtful about independence as well.
[1:52:40]
So we would want to scope this really carefully with you
[1:52:43]
should you, the committee choose to do this.
[1:52:47]
And I understand, mayor, that this is a priority of yours.
[1:52:49]
So if we did choose to move forward, we'd want to sit down and
[1:52:53]
scope out in detail with you so that we both feel comfortable with that.
[1:52:57]
I think that's maybe a clarifying question for me
[1:53:00]
is I look at these as high level priority items.
[1:53:04]
Once we we get the list agreed upon here as a committee, that we
[1:53:10]
then are sending back to city staff and internal audit to scope more,
[1:53:14]
as well as forwarding up to city council for the budgeting look.
[1:53:19]
So I think there's a lot of behind the scenes scoping.
[1:53:22]
We can call it scoping, I guess to the extent
[1:53:26]
any committee member maybe has an interest in that, we could
[1:53:30]
either set up a subcommittee which can consist of that one
[1:53:33]
committee member, or we can have up to two of us depending,
[1:53:37]
or I take direction from city staff to since
[1:53:42]
there's a number of projects here and we can't, I don't think internal audit
[1:53:46]
can do many of these without information and support from the city staff.
[1:53:50]
So to the extent we're scoping things, I would presume city staff's got a big
[1:53:55]
input into
[1:53:56]
what can be done and when can it be done and who's doing it and things like that.
[1:54:01]
So how do you suggest maybe this unfold and remind us
[1:54:05]
how this is unfolded in prior years? So
[1:54:09]
the the top
[1:54:11]
is from what the mayor had pointed out as her top projects.
[1:54:16]
It looks like it's distributed across the city,
[1:54:19]
that it's not heavy on one particular department.
[1:54:23]
Right? Code enforcement
[1:54:25]
being a seed, recruitments probably going to be more along.
[1:54:29]
Community resources
[1:54:31]
permitting kind of crosses both seed and public work.
[1:54:35]
So there might be a little more of a challenge there.
[1:54:38]
But I'm sure Pauline and Chelsea would be able to work around
[1:54:44]
scheduling to ensure that there's not too much overlap there, right?
[1:54:49]
Yeah. Okay.
[1:54:49]
I don't want to speak for you guys, but yeah, so there would be
[1:54:52]
less of a draw on that, that one particular department.
[1:54:56]
And then if the the committee wanted to pursue one of the others
[1:55:02]
is probably closer to the finance,
[1:55:04]
whether that's the property tax or the grants management
[1:55:08]
or even the cash flow of the account, the committee wanted to pursue that one.
[1:55:12]
So as far as a from a staff
[1:55:17]
workload, I don't think that's as much of an issue.
[1:55:20]
Again, at the end of the day, if you pursue most of these or just even
[1:55:26]
those top three, you are looking to have a budget adjustment needed, right?
[1:55:32]
Because I think with those top three plus the recommended validations,
[1:55:36]
we're looking at about 180 I believe.
[1:55:39]
So we would have request a council to bring an additional 60 plus
[1:55:43]
if you wanted to add
[1:55:44]
either one or the other three, which would be property tax permitting,
[1:55:47]
I'm sorry, property tax and cash flow review or the grant management follow up.
[1:55:52]
If there was a another item that you wanted, a
[1:55:56]
follow up or additional item, whether that's I think.
[1:56:00]
Chair.
[1:56:03]
You know we we discussed possibly the
[1:56:06]
a a report of sorts to be provided
[1:56:11]
in terms of the fund balance or appropriate fund balance.
[1:56:14]
Conversations with Chelsea and Colleen have been more along the lines.
[1:56:19]
It's probably going to be more of a management report
[1:56:22]
rather than a full blown project on the previous.
[1:56:29]
No. And so that was just
[1:56:33]
I'm sorry, that's not on here, because it's not really.
[1:56:35]
From conversations with Colleen and Chelsea, it's not so much of a project.
[1:56:40]
It's more it would be closely to a report to kind of, hey, this is best practice,
[1:56:45]
this portfolio and whatnot, kind of something along the lines.
[1:56:48]
And there would be obviously there would be some sort of calling.
[1:56:54]
Correct me if I'm wrong.
[1:56:55]
It's more of a some research kind of best practice.
[1:56:58]
Not so much.
[1:56:59]
What is the city doing and how should a city.
[1:57:01]
Because a lot of that's really policy that's driving that.
[1:57:04]
Yeah. And just a follow up.
[1:57:05]
We would most of our recommendations,
[1:57:07]
all of our recommendations are going to come be based off of the guidance.
[1:57:11]
So that's why we really said, you know looking at the guidance
[1:57:16]
we could put that in a report.
[1:57:17]
But is that really beneficial in regard
[1:57:21]
to the the study that's not on this list.
[1:57:24]
Correct. Verify that.
[1:57:25]
So I think we're still trying to get clarifying questions.
[1:57:28]
So you have a question vice Mayor.
[1:57:30]
So the other question is regarding
[1:57:34]
the permitting efficiency study. So
[1:57:39]
I think
[1:57:40]
one of the work programs this year has been
[1:57:45]
permitting streamlining, and the Planning Commission is already working on it
[1:57:51]
towards the end of their review and
[1:57:55]
going to be streamlining.
[1:57:57]
So I assume they already done some study.
[1:58:01]
If they are doing the policy change
[1:58:04]
modification on that. So
[1:58:09]
so I'm not sure.
[1:58:13]
So this permitting efficiency
[1:58:15]
are you going to look at in 2026 year data.
[1:58:20]
And then but then that's we they
[1:58:24]
probably we are probably going to already change things next year.
[1:58:29]
So how is I think this is something we really need
[1:58:34]
maybe last year.
[1:58:36]
So they sure about the timing of that.
[1:58:40]
Okay.
[1:58:40]
Let's see the city staff have a comment on I guess you're more attuned.
[1:58:45]
This is really a scoping thing.
[1:58:46]
Is this something you already worked with, the planning about the timing of.
[1:58:51]
Yeah, no.
[1:58:53]
The permitting.
[1:58:54]
It's actually that your top contenders actually came from city manager's office,
[1:58:58]
which was the code enforcement response time review
[1:59:02]
along with permitting efficiency, setting the recruitment and retention study.
[1:59:06]
That was the city manager's office recommendations.
[1:59:11]
And so whether that has kind of shifted
[1:59:14]
a little bit due to the Planning Commission involvement.
[1:59:20]
Probably at the
[1:59:20]
end of the day that I'm not sure.
[1:59:23]
Well, in terms of testing and what period it's going to cover.
[1:59:28]
Look to Colleen.
[1:59:29]
Yeah, we I mean, we can we can work with the city on that.
[1:59:32]
So, you know, depending on the scheduling of when we do that project,
[1:59:36]
that's something that we always work with city management on, as well
[1:59:40]
as really defining the scope and timing, the time frame that we're looking into.
[1:59:46]
You know that those are all really refined.
[1:59:49]
Once we get an idea of what projects to be working on.
[1:59:53]
So in this situation, let's say there are some adjustments to the workflow.
[1:59:57]
And that occurs in the first half of the fiscal year.
[2:00:00]
Maybe Baker Tilly can do the review in the second half
[2:00:03]
to see how that's being implemented.
[2:00:07]
If that that's direction.
[2:00:08]
Right. Question.
[2:00:11]
It does seem like the recommendation
[2:00:15]
validations is something that we do want to continue.
[2:00:19]
Like we have to ask to have that.
[2:00:21]
Yeah. Go on.
[2:00:22]
And what is exactly this the program management again I'm sorry.
[2:00:26]
So that's, you know, having me here right now, doing our monthly updates
[2:00:32]
with Jonathan and team to talk about project status,
[2:00:35]
reviewing the fraud and abuse hotline, making sure, monitoring that,
[2:00:39]
creating these reports, that sort of thing.
[2:00:42]
That seems almost like the recommendation validation
[2:00:46]
like like you need to continue that.
[2:00:50]
Right. Those two.
[2:00:51]
And that's so typically those two are we almost combined.
[2:00:55]
You know we've done in prior years.
[2:00:56]
And just those are kind of the the ones that we have to do okay.
[2:01:01]
It's like a base. Yes.
[2:01:03]
So we would end up if you went with recruitment three on one
[2:01:06]
and permitting you're at 140 and then so 170 out of the 270.
[2:01:14]
So you could still send it to council with that even though it's above the 120.
[2:01:20]
I don't know if property tax could be done by a combination
[2:01:25]
of HDL and city staff.
[2:01:27]
And Jason,
[2:01:30]
you know, and how perfect do those numbers need to be in order to advocate?
[2:01:34]
So for Colleen's question about what the numbers are going to be used for,
[2:01:38]
it'll be used for advocacy for the city.
[2:01:43]
So we have this disparity between the amount of property
[2:01:46]
tax our city gets versus other cities.
[2:01:50]
We're much lower for the property tax that we get back.
[2:01:52]
And that's really the the crux of the matter is to
[2:01:57]
to see what we can do to advocate for the city moving forward long term
[2:02:02]
through some sort of legislative change in Sacramento, if at all possible, or.
[2:02:10]
If there's anything we can do about that.
[2:02:12]
So that's why the numbers need to be defensible.
[2:02:16]
But I'm not sure if Baker Tilly's the right
[2:02:22]
entity to do that.
[2:02:24]
And if you feel comfortable knowing what we're going to be using the numbers for,
[2:02:31]
I have some thoughts.
[2:02:33]
And I first
[2:02:36]
and foremost, you're reliant on county data, right?
[2:02:40]
The county is the ultimate tax collector.
[2:02:43]
And so you will be relying on county data for all of this analysis
[2:02:47]
and what is available to you.
[2:02:48]
And ideally everything is available publicly.
[2:02:52]
But the reliance in cooperation with
[2:02:55]
the county is going to be really important through this process as well.
[2:02:59]
It may
[2:03:01]
it may be worthwhile for you all to consider who
[2:03:03]
you would like to be involved in that just from that perspective,
[2:03:07]
because your relationship with the county is really important, right?
[2:03:10]
It's not limited to just this, but you have to work together on many items.
[2:03:14]
So I would recommend talking maybe with the city manager
[2:03:17]
and with the finance director a little bit more about how you'd like to go
[2:03:22]
about the work before you engage someone to to do it.
[2:03:28]
We certainly can do that analysis in our professional standards,
[2:03:32]
and we're not allowed to advocate for our clients.
[2:03:34]
But we can make your recommendations or we can provide data.
[2:03:39]
Okay.
[2:03:42]
So my question is what's most useful here?
[2:03:45]
This is both for the committee and staff and internal auditors.
[2:03:49]
We all of these projects in some sense, we don't have a budget constraint
[2:03:54]
because we can, as the mayor indicated, and all of these up and say, you know,
[2:04:00]
if you think of some more, add those to or
[2:04:04]
we could try to delete some of these or
[2:04:08]
some other hybrid approach.
[2:04:10]
So how do we make the rest of our meaning of fishing here?
[2:04:13]
I know we had a great discussion on grant management follow up, and there's
[2:04:16]
probably lots of follow up items that we could specify in the scoping.
[2:04:21]
And vice mayor had some really good comments that we don't want to forget that
[2:04:25]
she had them, but I'm not sure if this is the
[2:04:28]
maybe we if we said we wanted to move forward with grant management follow up,
[2:04:32]
then we need some more input and city staff would assemble that scoping
[2:04:35]
and maybe solicit the vice mayor's comments.
[2:04:38]
I'm just talking out loud here.
[2:04:39]
I'm trying to figure a way to move forward with this.
[2:04:42]
Do we really want to delete any of these items?
[2:04:44]
Is there an app that's one way to go about it? I'm not.
[2:04:47]
I don't have an appetite to delete any of them.
[2:04:49]
Since I've removed budget constraint and the personnel constraint, you could.
[2:04:55]
Thoughts, right.
[2:04:55]
You could prioritize the only one that I could see potentially getting removed
[2:05:00]
to see cash flow review investment and cash flow review at this time.
[2:05:05]
But if by investment we mean talking about reserves,
[2:05:10]
if that's if that could be assumed to be embedded in that item, then maybe
[2:05:15]
add that word into the project description to get the best practices on reserves.
[2:05:22]
Because I have been wanting to hear that.
[2:05:26]
So so that was the only one that I could remove.
[2:05:29]
But if you add in the reserves even more than I really want it.
[2:05:33]
Yeah.
[2:05:34]
And then you could, we could
[2:05:37]
prioritize, but also like, like recommended
[2:05:40]
validations and program management.
[2:05:42]
Seems like that has to move forward.
[2:05:44]
So I would put that on the top of the list
[2:05:47]
as these are these two were deemed necessary.
[2:05:51]
And then I and then we could
[2:05:54]
prioritize recruitment 311 or permitting
[2:05:58]
and just give a prioritized list to the council.
[2:06:02]
And and they can discuss it with the entire list though available.
[2:06:07]
Sure. I like that idea. Yeah.
[2:06:08]
So before we go too much into talking about that, we're still showing.
[2:06:13]
Why don't we just.
[2:06:14]
Are there any comments from the public?
[2:06:18]
Didn't hear I see.
[2:06:20]
No, no probably or and we have great.
[2:06:23]
So they come late. So
[2:06:26]
yeah sure.
[2:06:27]
Now we can maybe move a motion to if you want.
[2:06:30]
So the recording of grant management follow up.
[2:06:34]
It says follow up on outstanding recommendations.
[2:06:39]
Assess how the city has made so.
[2:06:43]
But so here you are referring to the grants management final report.
[2:06:49]
The recommendations made their correct.
[2:06:52]
So based on the one year review right.
[2:06:56]
There is a lot of really great recommendations.
[2:07:00]
They're already on.
[2:07:04]
Right.
[2:07:04]
And so you were saying
[2:07:05]
does this project involve follow up on those recommendations.
[2:07:08]
Does that.
[2:07:10]
So that project will be working
[2:07:15]
with the city staff to implement those recommendations.
[2:07:20]
That's in that report.
[2:07:21]
Right.
[2:07:22]
So doing it really doesn't mean the council has to approve
[2:07:27]
those recommendations rather than just receive the report,
[2:07:31]
because those recommendations, I think some of them are
[2:07:35]
pretty involved in terms of implementation and staff.
[2:07:41]
The report
[2:07:45]
will be forwarded to council and believe council's
[2:07:49]
action is just to receive the report,
[2:07:53]
as that's how it's been in the past.
[2:07:55]
Okay.
[2:07:56]
But then
[2:07:59]
so the staff will decide, I guess, some priority
[2:08:04]
on what the recommendation is to implement and how.
[2:08:09]
Maybe if I could outline how follow up on that,
[2:08:12]
maybe all the recommendations in that report
[2:08:14]
would go into the equivalent of the 79 number that we saw.
[2:08:18]
And then staff will talk with internal audit,
[2:08:20]
and some of the things will go away because of the new
[2:08:25]
grant management analyst
[2:08:26]
that's been brought on, the new policy that's apparently out there.
[2:08:29]
And then the internal audit would evaluate
[2:08:31]
whether those two facts are actually true, and then they would put it
[2:08:34]
in the resolution column.
[2:08:36]
Is that how you would envision it?
[2:08:39]
That is one way.
[2:08:40]
Yes, absolutely.
[2:08:42]
You know, I know Vice Mayor, you had other areas that you wanted to look into.
[2:08:47]
So that's I mean, the these are potential,
[2:08:50]
you know, obviously we can mold them to what is most beneficial for the city
[2:08:56]
and what management thinks they can take on.
[2:09:01]
Does that help?
[2:09:03]
Yeah.
[2:09:04]
So I guess go back to what we talked about
[2:09:09]
some earlier grants that
[2:09:12]
we had concerns on.
[2:09:16]
So that may.
[2:09:20]
Require some case study on
[2:09:24]
how they those come about.
[2:09:26]
One example is the augmented reality app.
[2:09:29]
And I think another example is the city.
[2:09:33]
We received a grant
[2:09:36]
to redevelop the heart of the city plan, which the council never requested,
[2:09:42]
but the city got almost $500,000
[2:09:46]
grant, I think 450. And.
[2:09:52]
By the same grant
[2:09:54]
we could have applied for other things it could have gotten approved on.
[2:09:59]
Then at that time, the council didn't
[2:10:02]
see the need to redo the heart of the city plan,
[2:10:07]
so eventually didn't
[2:10:11]
didn't receive, didn't, I think, accept the grant.
[2:10:15]
So that's a wasted effort because there wasn't a
[2:10:20]
it wasn't synchronized with the Council biology at that time.
[2:10:25]
And and another example is
[2:10:30]
the ATP active transportation plan
[2:10:32]
that grants for we were being presented.
[2:10:36]
All this project is funded
[2:10:39]
by this particular grant.
[2:10:43]
Therefore we have to move forward with the project.
[2:10:48]
Otherwise we will lose the great.
[2:10:50]
It's always been like that, right?
[2:10:51]
The other one was also we already got the grant.
[2:10:54]
You have to approve the project.
[2:10:56]
So the ATP, we kind of we move forward with that.
[2:11:01]
But the same type of grant could also be applied to other
[2:11:09]
project in the city.
[2:11:11]
It doesn't have to be used for this particular project.
[2:11:15]
So this has been a way
[2:11:18]
that the grant approval is driving
[2:11:22]
council priority rather than the other way around.
[2:11:27]
I'm, you know, one recommendation I might make if
[2:11:30]
if the committee is interested in that project.
[2:11:33]
Sounds like, you know, with this new policy that has been
[2:11:37]
developed and implemented, we could take a look at that policy
[2:11:42]
and test it against certain grants to make sure that the process and,
[2:11:47]
you know, all the way to council approval is is done appropriately.
[2:11:53]
And we can see the process laid out against this new policy to make sure that,
[2:11:59]
you know, these instances that you're you're talking about.
[2:12:02]
Don't happen again.
[2:12:04]
Or is there something that could slip through the cracks?
[2:12:06]
Yeah.
[2:12:07]
If we can have some case studies, this case is
[2:12:11]
the new process would have handled this way.
[2:12:14]
That would be helpful.
[2:12:16]
And another example is
[2:12:20]
the BMR grant that went.
[2:12:23]
This is actually BMR fees.
[2:12:25]
So this is not great.
[2:12:27]
I'm not sure where it's applied but the BMI fees
[2:12:31]
has been used of to pay for legal fees.
[2:12:37]
That's not related exactly to below market rate
[2:12:41]
and for newspaper subscription.
[2:12:44]
And the public has brought this up to us.
[2:12:48]
So. This
[2:12:52]
is probably not Grant.
[2:12:55]
But then it's a.
[2:12:57]
Way how how we use
[2:13:01]
different funds for different function.
[2:13:05]
I think another example was I think we had we had
[2:13:10]
there was some issue with a hot grant that we somehow did not report properly.
[2:13:16]
That was right.
[2:13:18]
That was resolved.
[2:13:20]
But then
[2:13:21]
with the current process, prevent us from
[2:13:26]
making the same mistake again.
[2:13:28]
So maybe staff has some comments you bring up.
[2:13:33]
So we recently had a special revenue fund project,
[2:13:38]
and that addressed the concerns you had with the BMR,
[2:13:42]
which the new process has been essentially a lot of it ultimately was staffing.
[2:13:47]
Training and whatnot.
[2:13:52]
But yeah, so that one has been put to rest.
[2:13:55]
We have a implemented a process to address that, that that issue,
[2:14:02]
basically administrative overhead
[2:14:03]
is going to getting paid for from the general fund.
[2:14:07]
So BMR is just going towards building
[2:14:11]
BMR rather than having all this other
[2:14:14]
administrative stuff pulling from that.
[2:14:17]
There's been a lot more restrictions and even director oversight
[2:14:23]
of that specific fund to ensure that nothing slips
[2:14:26]
between the cracks, that it's more what we're allowing to or what
[2:14:31]
expenses are funneling through into that fund is are actually more restricted.
[2:14:36]
Although the the handbook is
[2:14:39]
could be more inclusive administratively.
[2:14:43]
We've restricted what actually goes to that. Okay.
[2:14:46]
So I think the hot green is probably related to CDBG grant.
[2:14:50]
Correct.
[2:14:50]
And so that will also go through
[2:14:54]
the same process or the different part that I believe it's a separate process
[2:14:59]
because it's kind of different rules apply to CDBG.
[2:15:03]
However it is managed by the same individuals.
[2:15:07]
So and Nikki.
[2:15:11]
He's quite knowledgeable with CDBG.
[2:15:14]
And so I'm quite.
[2:15:18]
Confident in his his abilities to ensure that the expenses
[2:15:21]
that are allocated to that fund are appropriate.
[2:15:26]
Yes. There.
[2:15:27]
Thank you.
[2:15:28]
So I did run this through Claude
[2:15:32]
and asked Claude to prioritize the list
[2:15:37]
in order of importance.
[2:15:38]
And they did it based on fiduciary risk, financial materiality, how directly
[2:15:44]
each ties to active city priorities and came up with the investment cash flow
[2:15:49]
first to last investment cash flow review for 35, they said.
[2:15:53]
Highest fiduciary risk category safeguarding public funds.
[2:15:57]
This is the kind of audit that protects against fraud, mismanagement, exposure
[2:16:01]
and is often treated as core recurring due diligence.
[2:16:04]
Number two, and I would argue who should do this?
[2:16:07]
But it was the property tax review directly
[2:16:10]
complements your ongoing EB eight allocation.
[2:16:14]
US and BLS swap work this audit could formalize
[2:16:17]
and validate the analysis
[2:16:19]
you're already doing informally and has real revenue implications.
[2:16:23]
I don't think they're overstating that, but three permitting efficiency study
[2:16:27]
highest fee
[2:16:27]
but permitting delays have direct economic development and revenue consequences.
[2:16:31]
Developer relations, fee capture, staff time, high visibility
[2:16:35]
and high potential return on investment for recruitment and retention.
[2:16:39]
Study 45,000 work workforce risk affects every other city function.
[2:16:44]
Turnover and vacancy costs compound over time.
[2:16:47]
This is foundational to organizational capacity.
[2:16:50]
Then 311 response time review important for service
[2:16:54]
delivery and public trust, but lower financial risk than the above.
[2:16:59]
Grant management follow up compliance driven grantor requirements
[2:17:03]
clawback risks but scoped as a follow up rather than a new risk area.
[2:17:07]
And then the last two were the program management and validations.
[2:17:10]
But they said program management necessary overhead to keep the audit
[2:17:14]
function running.
[2:17:15]
Recommended validation lowest cost
[2:17:18]
largely administrative tracking of prior findings important for accountability.
[2:17:23]
So in mind
[2:17:25]
AI like cloth tend to give you a recommendation
[2:17:29]
based on your past questions, which is why?
[2:17:33]
Why? Yeah, those are on top.
[2:17:36]
So it's.
[2:17:36]
Oh but I haven't asked about the other one.
[2:17:38]
These other things are all new, but I think I know it tend to bias
[2:17:43]
based on what they know about you
[2:17:46]
does that to me, but of my own accord.
[2:17:50]
I went into the net property tax 311 and permitting
[2:17:54]
and then add Rec validation and program that create a new account
[2:17:58]
and ask again, yeah, we'll have a recommendation.
[2:18:03]
I think we can also look at process.
[2:18:05]
Or there's one element of process.
[2:18:07]
We'd be here a lot later tonight if we hadn't had a tracking
[2:18:11]
of our comments over the past year in our various meetings.
[2:18:14]
So it's not that it's just this meeting that we're talking about.
[2:18:17]
There's there's other projects that got excluded.
[2:18:19]
There's there's, you know, we've settled on this, this list.
[2:18:22]
So there's still the scoping element for each one of them.
[2:18:25]
I think maybe we might want to make a note for the following year
[2:18:29]
that whenever we get to the next item, which we won't probably tonight,
[2:18:33]
but the the work plan that we have, that's when we've often said, well, wouldn't it
[2:18:37]
be good if we could do this or that?
[2:18:39]
And I know you've raised a few of those over the past year,
[2:18:42]
so I'm very happy that we're at this stage.
[2:18:44]
I think we're at the point where we could maybe keep the I don't hear anyone
[2:18:48]
really having an appetite to remove items on here,
[2:18:51]
but maybe the priority of them is something in doubt.
[2:18:54]
We could maybe get consensus on that.
[2:18:57]
I'm not even sure that's helpful, though.
[2:18:59]
The city council is going to probably want to come fresh at this list
[2:19:03]
if we forward it, and.
[2:19:05]
But you two are both on the council.
[2:19:08]
Is it helpful for us to come up with a priority in some way?
[2:19:12]
And then does that have weight with the city council?
[2:19:16]
I mean, the two of you would then well supported, I suppose.
[2:19:20]
Well, you have two that are automatic, so you only have six to prioritize.
[2:19:24]
Property tax review gets a question mark for who's best to do that.
[2:19:30]
So you could remove it or just put it to the side and say
[2:19:34]
this, this one, we're not sure how best to handle it.
[2:19:37]
Well, I think we can keep it and then say city staff and internal audit.
[2:19:41]
And of course, any other people that have input, like the mayor
[2:19:45]
would then come up
[2:19:46]
with a little bit more scoping before it would go to city council.
[2:19:49]
I would think some more work on where I see us having our value
[2:19:54]
here is saying we could list these items, all of them right now,
[2:19:58]
for example, and then say the top five from our perspective, our
[2:20:03]
top four.
[2:20:03]
And then but all of them are valuable.
[2:20:05]
And more scoping is going to come from internal audit
[2:20:09]
and city staff before it gets to city council.
[2:20:13]
And then even more scoping might come at city council
[2:20:16]
saying, well, they want you guys want more Committee does.
[2:20:19]
How about that as an approach. So keep property tax in there.
[2:20:22]
But it needs some more scoping.
[2:20:23]
So Colleen is happy and you're happy.
[2:20:26]
And city staff stop okay.
[2:20:28]
So could should we each say what our top.
[2:20:31]
Why don't you propose and then we'll just your disagree.
[2:20:36]
Just I've got the recruitment property tax 311 and permitting.
[2:20:40]
I am fine with those but. Okay.
[2:20:43]
But it's mayor.
[2:20:44]
You got one that you prefer to elevate.
[2:20:46]
Is it a this is a priority checked
[2:20:49]
which is my my go to.
[2:20:52]
On so puts permitting efficiency first code enforcement
[2:20:59]
second property tax review third
[2:21:02]
grant management follow up and investment
[2:21:06]
cash flow and recruitment and retention study.
[2:21:10]
So it's like totally different priorities.
[2:21:18]
Well do you support that priority or can we
[2:21:22]
maybe I do think property tax review might be best to handle the separately
[2:21:28]
because we need those numbers for different purpose.
[2:21:33]
It's not really for all.
[2:21:36]
It's really for advocacy. So
[2:21:40]
so what I'm hearing you are saying the number that would be defensible.
[2:21:44]
Right.
[2:21:44]
So it might be best to what I'm hearing.
[2:21:48]
We can probably group the permitting recruitment and be one one
[2:21:51]
as your top three.
[2:21:52]
Not any particular order followed by grant.
[2:21:58]
At least some of the comments is probably Grant followed by investment cash.
[2:22:03]
And then lastly property tax with the
[2:22:08]
the the last two being
[2:22:12]
automatic.
[2:22:14]
Okay.
[2:22:15]
So the
[2:22:17]
for recruitment and retention,
[2:22:21]
I think the mayor initially also
[2:22:24]
didn't think that's important. Right.
[2:22:27]
That one is also it's the lowest in my list
[2:22:32]
except the tomb and program management.
[2:22:35]
So which were wondering
[2:22:39]
this is a person public works or public works.
[2:22:42]
It needs that some stabilization seems
[2:22:46]
I think that's a very important one right there.
[2:22:50]
So I can I can agree with the permitting recruitment and 311 in the top group.
[2:22:56]
And we could present it that way.
[2:22:57]
You know this is our top this this is a must have program management.
[2:23:02]
And then we have just break it into a tier
[2:23:05]
one and tier two tier one permitting recruitment and 311
[2:23:10]
because it's because our the manager is asking for recruitment.
[2:23:13]
I would say if she's identified that
[2:23:16]
we should probably support her on that and then go with the grant investment
[2:23:19]
and property tax and just call it tier two, in no particular order.
[2:23:23]
And have that identified is that these are not in order.
[2:23:26]
This is our first upper group and our lower group and then our automatic group.
[2:23:34]
We like that approach.
[2:23:36]
I can get behind it okay. Thanks, mayor.
[2:23:39]
You're not. It sounds like it.
[2:23:40]
All right, so why don't we have a motion that I do have a question
[2:23:45]
still about the recruitment and retention.
[2:23:49]
This seems to.
[2:23:51]
This is good.
[2:23:52]
This is not a typical internal audit function.
[2:23:55]
It overlaps with HR.
[2:23:57]
That's something I think that
[2:24:02]
the city's the HR
[2:24:05]
department has been doing over the years.
[2:24:08]
Right.
[2:24:09]
So how would this be different if you recover it.
[2:24:14]
Yeah.
[2:24:15]
If your called Chelsea's presentation asking is not just internal
[2:24:18]
controls, it's also performance efficiency and effectiveness.
[2:24:21]
So our goal is to help out across the city based on its highest risk areas.
[2:24:27]
Our enterprise risk assessment did identify this as a higher risk area
[2:24:31]
and than it was requested by the city manager.
[2:24:33]
But our scope is by
[2:24:35]
any part of city operations that could increase the city's risk.
[2:24:39]
And your ability to recruit and retain employees is certainly an area
[2:24:43]
of operational risk.
[2:24:45]
And every time there's turnover, it costs the city money to.
[2:24:48]
Yeah, but then do you have the expertise in this area?
[2:24:53]
Yes. Yeah we do.
[2:24:54]
We've done dozens of HR related public sector studies.
[2:24:58]
Have you done any recruitment.
[2:25:01]
Yes, yes.
[2:25:02]
Your company does recruitment.
[2:25:05]
We don't do recruitment itself.
[2:25:07]
We do assessments of performance, efficiency and effectiveness
[2:25:13]
related to what the city's goals are and best practice.
[2:25:17]
But we have folks on our team who are actually retired
[2:25:21]
or former municipal human resources directors.
[2:25:26]
Okay, great. Why don't we
[2:25:30]
try to get
[2:25:31]
a motion here that would like on the tears
[2:25:35]
and to city Council that we're supportive of these.
[2:25:38]
And of course more detail is available and will likely be available
[2:25:42]
before presentation.
[2:25:44]
So I move that we create two tiers.
[2:25:48]
And these are in no particular order within the tier that we have
[2:25:52]
the permitting, the recruitment and 311 in considered tier one.
[2:25:58]
Tier two would be the grants investment, cash flow and property tax.
[2:26:03]
And then we will have the
[2:26:05]
I don't know how to identify it, but the automatic baseline
[2:26:09]
items would be project management and recommendation validation.
[2:26:15]
Those are required.
[2:26:18]
So these are really automatic authentic.
[2:26:21]
Yeah they must must be included.
[2:26:25]
Must have.
[2:26:26]
Well I second it since okay.
[2:26:29]
Yeah.
[2:26:30]
Then we can discuss our motion.
[2:26:32]
We've got a motion I think that was clear.
[2:26:33]
Do we need to reread it back. We're good.
[2:26:36]
Okay, I like it.
[2:26:37]
Any other thoughts to add?
[2:26:40]
Carrie, you are you receiving the report and forwarding it to the city council?
[2:26:45]
Yes, with our comment.
[2:26:47]
The motion as amended,
[2:26:50]
the tier, the tiered.
[2:26:52]
I guess we're forwarding the report with the tears that are in the motion.
[2:26:55]
Won't be sure to include that as part of the staff report.
[2:26:57]
Perfect. Yeah. All right.
[2:26:59]
Good clarification. All right.
[2:27:01]
All in favor of this motion? I
[2:27:05]
so, the three of us. All right. Thank you.
[2:27:07]
We do have one more item which we can just maybe scurry
[2:27:11]
really quickly through, which is the Excel sheet.
[2:27:14]
And thank you, Colleen and Chelsea, for leading us through.
[2:27:18]
Sorry. It's gotten a little bit later than we all anticipated.
[2:27:21]
You had to come back two times,
[2:27:22]
but the poor vice mayor here and didn't had even more trouble.
[2:27:26]
So thank you everyone.
[2:27:28]
And our last sheet is we keep track of this.
[2:27:31]
So again, I think it fits in well with this last internal audit
[2:27:34]
discussion we had.
[2:27:35]
The idea is as we come up with things, we can have a subcommittee
[2:27:39]
or we can suggest internal audit, do it.
[2:27:43]
And I'm much more in favor of of settling on the internal audit for city staff
[2:27:47]
can actually do reports itself.
[2:27:48]
So a number of them are forthcoming.
[2:27:50]
So any changes that anyone has to this.
[2:27:54]
Thanks Jonathan for keeping it. I out
[2:27:57]
obviously that we see this every meeting.
[2:27:59]
So I'd suggest we just move forward.
[2:28:02]
But more studies certainly welcome by everybody.
[2:28:07]
All right one recommendation.
[2:28:08]
We've already for next October 26th.
[2:28:11]
You've already received the citywide control o citywide control review.
[2:28:15]
Excuse me I'm not seeing.
[2:28:17]
Yeah, that's correctly I thought there was a statewide policy.
[2:28:19]
We're good. Right.
[2:28:21]
Yeah. All right.
[2:28:22]
So nice on that happiness
[2:28:25]
overview. Oh, yeah.
[2:28:27]
Public comment on our item eight.
[2:28:29]
I totally forgot the last person.
[2:28:32]
Hopefully we do we have any.
[2:28:34]
That's all right.
[2:28:35]
On that happy note.
[2:28:36]
Thanks everybody.
[2:28:37]
We are concluded.
[2:28:39]
The motion for that is our mother.
[2:28:40]
No we don't to motion on it.
[2:28:42]
Just we accept it as an information item and receive it.
[2:28:46]
But often we have many guests on it.
[2:28:49]
So we are adjourned.
[2:28:51]
Okay. And we can look to