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Event transcript
Go ahead and get started. Is this on? Yeah, there we go. 00:09:47
As soon as Councilman hold away, we'll take a seat. 00:09:50
Just kidding, Jake. 00:09:53
All righty, today is February 3rd, 2026. It is 6:00 PM. 00:09:55
I am Mayor Zach Stratton. I'll be presiding in this meeting and I'd like to open up the. 00:10:00
Council meeting. 00:10:04
Today we are going to have Carson Walker. 00:10:05
Give us our opening. 00:10:08
Prayer and then. 00:10:09
Pledge of Allegiance, so. 00:10:11
Carson, come on up. 00:10:13
And then when you're done. 00:10:14
You get a pen. 00:10:16
From our recorder. 00:10:16
Our Father in heaven. 00:10:22
We thank thee for this opportunity to get together and to. 00:10:23
Hear about and. 00:10:28
Be involved in our. 00:10:32
Community and. 00:10:34
Do our civil. 00:10:36
Civic engagement and. 00:10:38
We pray for they. 00:10:40
Spirit and guidance to. 00:10:41
Help the people of Vineyard into. 00:10:44
Provide. 00:10:50
A blessing for the leadership that they can. 00:10:52
Umm. 00:10:56
Help the community. 00:10:59
And. 00:11:01
This part of our country. 00:11:03
And we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. 00:11:05
Amendment. Thank you so much. 00:11:08
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of. 00:11:18
And to the Republic for which it stands. 00:11:23
One nation under God. 00:11:25
Indivisible with liberty and justice for all. 00:11:28
Awesome. Thank you so much. 00:11:35
And make sure you wear that pin everywhere you go. 00:11:39
OK. 00:11:41
All righty, we're going to jump right into our presentations. 00:11:44
This evening we have Chris Harding is going to give us a start us off. 00:11:48
What the presentation is as a. 00:11:52
Point of clarification, So Chris was the gentleman that performed the second audit that we had done last year. 00:11:56
Focused on operations and. 00:12:03
RDA and so forth. So we've asked him to come talk about next steps in that and just kind of walk us through that, so I will. 00:12:05
Turn the time over to Chris. Do you need? 00:12:13
OK, you. 00:12:18
The computer there for I realized last time, my Mac does not play well. It doesn't play super well. 00:12:19
Is it any of this right here? OK, awesome. 00:12:26
Like shows me. 00:13:12
Sorry, sorry. 00:13:17
Captions. 00:13:42
That's what I want. 00:13:44
Let's go to view. 00:14:08
Slides. 00:14:11
Slash errors. 00:14:15
OK, presenter mode. 00:14:18
Housing. 00:14:53
Yeah. 00:14:59
It's okay, I could. 00:15:03
Do you just want to present it like that and I'll? 00:15:05
You guys can probably. 00:15:07
I just brought my notes but. 00:15:10
It probably doesn't matter. We don't need to be all. 00:15:12
Super professional, private, doesn't matter if you guys can see my notes. 00:15:15
Yeah. 00:15:26
Someone has a piece. 00:15:38
Oh, this is a PC. We're just trying to make it so that I could see my notes when the slides go up. 00:15:42
Yeah, yeah, we can just do it again. 00:15:48
Yeah. 00:15:50
This way. 00:15:53
Yeah, sorry about that, Sir. No, that's OK. 00:15:54
All righty, yeah. 00:15:59
And then I don't have to look down here, I can kind of glance up here. 00:16:00
All right, so. 00:16:04
Yeah, so last year I did a. 00:16:06
Agreed upon procedures. 00:16:09
Where? 00:16:11
Certain things that. 00:16:12
Prior council wanted me to check out. 00:16:14
It's very. 00:16:18
Factually, uh. 00:16:19
A base that is very different from. 00:16:21
An audit like for your guys's financial statements where an opinion is given. 00:16:23
It's literally just. 00:16:28
The facts like. 00:16:30
For an example like. 00:16:31
I looked at 10 invoices and. 00:16:33
Were seven of them had supporting documentations, 3 did not. It's very factually based. There's again, no no opinions. But with 00:16:35
that I did a supplemental report. 00:16:41
That was. 00:16:48
Some observations and some recommendations. 00:16:50
And from that? 00:16:54
There were. 00:16:56
Seven different areas that. 00:16:57
I looked at everything from the. 00:16:59
RDA to mills and travel and. 00:17:01
The fleet as well. 00:17:04
But then Vineyard reached out, asked if I could. 00:17:07
Do some more in depth work. 00:17:11
Focusing on just the RDA. 00:17:14
And help to implement some of the recommendations or to to get the ball rolling. 00:17:17
For. 00:17:22
One bid. 00:17:25
And then for another one it's. 00:17:26
The other sections one through 4. 00:17:28
And then 6:00 and 7:00. 00:17:30
Just to help. 00:17:33
Proposed some policies, hopefully that. 00:17:34
Management will then take and accept. 00:17:37
Edit how they want. 00:17:40
And and and move forward. So let's see. 00:17:42
Yeah, I kind of went over this. Agreed upon procedures are factual. 00:17:47
What? 00:17:52
From my observations, there was a lot of. 00:17:53
Reliance for Vineyard. 00:17:56
There was a lot of trust there. There were some verification, some of the receipts and invoices were there for these different 00:17:59
areas. 00:18:02
But for some of them, it was just a big question mark. 00:18:06
So the again kind of going into detail for the first one, the. 00:18:10
RDA What I'm planning to do is a deep dive. 00:18:14
Into those remediation costs where? 00:18:18
I came back from last. 00:18:21
December and said. 00:18:23
Hey, with a lot of these things, it's just a question mark. 00:18:24
I don't know if that stuff because it wasn't in the billing documents. 00:18:28
The scope of this work would be to go and actually. 00:18:32
Find out. 00:18:35
If it wasn't in the. 00:18:37
The billing document summary that I was given, we're going to go further into that. The last job was. 00:18:38
300. 00:18:47
50 some odd hours. 00:18:48
For all 7 areas. 00:18:50
This proposal number one, this is a bid for. It's about 300 and. 00:18:53
33 hours. It was roughly about 300 hours. 00:18:59
To do a deep dive into the RDA. 00:19:03
But I. 00:19:05
Put I put some contingency hours in there. So that's what gets it up to the 330. 00:19:06
The time frame on this is about February through May that I'm. 00:19:13
Hoping and estimating. 00:19:18
That this would be again. 00:19:21
More in depth. 00:19:23
Where going out to the. 00:19:24
The folks that are doing the work for the RDA, the contractors, possibly subcontractors. 00:19:27
Trying to see what. 00:19:34
Documentation and support they can provide. 00:19:35
To help. 00:19:39
Is I don't know. My term is to give us the warm fuzzies, you know? 00:19:40
They put $10,000 on a bill. 00:19:45
What is there to substantiate that? 00:19:48
To see the actual work that. 00:19:52
Was performed. 00:19:55
Let's see. 00:19:57
Proposal 2 is a little bit. 00:20:06
Uh, different. This is the sections one through 4:00 and 6:00 and 7:00. 00:20:09
In that supplemental. 00:20:13
When we. 00:20:14
It's a lot different in these areas, that's why. 00:20:15
Chapter 5. The RDA is separate in and of itself. 00:20:18
We're having to. 00:20:21
It's much more involved. 00:20:23
To look at that RDA and those costs. 00:20:25
Because. 00:20:27
Vineyard as a whole, the city is not. 00:20:28
In control of all those documents we have to work with sub. 00:20:30
A subcontractor or a contractor in their Subs. 00:20:34
P cards, travel, cash, these are all documents. 00:20:39
And policies that. 00:20:43
Vineyard should have. 00:20:44
And So what the implementation support. 00:20:46
That I'm proposing. 00:20:49
For one through 4:00 and 6:00 and 7:00. 00:20:51
This is where helping management to set up. 00:20:53
Clear policies. I've kind of told this before when I initially got the. 00:20:57
Policy document. I thought I was looking at the P card policy document. It was 12 pages and I was like. 00:21:05
OK, well, I mean, that's not not too bad. And then I realized that was like all 12 pages, wasn't just. 00:21:11
Card policy. It was like. 00:21:17
Maybe it wasn't all of Vineyard's policies, but it was all the policies. 00:21:20
That work that I was looking at, I was like, oh, OK. 00:21:24
This is kind of an indication. 00:21:26
We're a little light on policies. 00:21:28
So in this proposal. 00:21:30
I'll try and help Vineyard. 00:21:33
With that to see. 00:21:35
OK, here's where we need to change beef up. 00:21:36
Policies for P cards or travel or food. 00:21:39
One of the things I I noted. 00:21:42
Like just to give you an example we'll take. 00:21:45
Travel, for example. 00:21:47
There was a travel reimbursement form. 00:21:51
That I looked at. 00:21:54
And. 00:21:56
The you know there was nothing written down. 00:21:57
But the general consensus of the employees I interviewed? 00:22:00
Was that? 00:22:03
They would only fill that form out if they needed to get reimbursement. 00:22:05
That the general. 00:22:09
Sense of. 00:22:11
Approval for a trip was kind of worked out with their management, the overall budget approval. 00:22:12
Was done. 00:22:18
When you guys approved? 00:22:19
The city budget at. 00:22:21
The beginning of the year, whenever your budget time frame is. 00:22:23
And that then each respective department would just manage their funds. 00:22:26
From that. 00:22:30
Essentially. 00:22:31
That they had the approval. 00:22:32
Sometimes approvals were documented, sometimes we could find some emails. 00:22:33
But there were a lot of times where it was hard for us to. 00:22:38
Be able to pinpoint. 00:22:42
Here's the inception where discussion happened about. 00:22:43
Do we need to take this trip and what's the justification? 00:22:46
All the way up to. 00:22:50
You know, did we get a good deal for our airline tickets? 00:22:51
Where are we going? 00:22:54
And then all the receipts that go along with that. 00:22:56
So as we're going forward. 00:23:00
This proposals to say. 00:23:02
You know, what policies can we establish, what training can we give? 00:23:04
To management the different department heads as their. 00:23:08
Going forward, how are we going to change it from what's being done in the past to how we want to do it in the future, so that 00:23:12
when a question arises, whether from the council or outside, hey, I saw a vineyard at a. 00:23:18
Down in Saint George at a conference, What were they doing there? 00:23:24
The the council members can reach out to that department. 00:23:27
And the department can say, Oh yeah, well. 00:23:30
Here's why we're going. Here's our justification. Here's our form that shows. 00:23:32
The discussion we had that it was planned and it was within budget. Here's we we went out and got. 00:23:37
Three bids for. 00:23:43
Are not three bids, but we checked three different. 00:23:44
Hotel locations and. 00:23:46
We chose this one because it was the most economical and fit our needs. Was closest to the. 00:23:48
The venue. 00:23:54
So that's what we're doing in this. 00:23:56
Second proposal and again that's P cards, travel, food. 00:23:59
Cash. Utilities. 00:24:03
I apologize. I don't know why I have it in there. The vehicle fleet is also going to be. 00:24:07
Part of that. 00:24:11
And I'm I'm envisioning this second proposal happening after the RDA. 00:24:12
It's possible there could be stuff work that that could be for waiting for something on the RDA. 00:24:17
Proposal that we could work at earlier than May. 00:24:22
But I lined it up. 00:24:26
At least on this presentation taking place. 00:24:27
After the RDA sold about May through September. 00:24:29
And I figured about 271 hours is what I was. 00:24:33
Bidding on. 00:24:37
On this. 00:24:39
Proposal. 00:24:41
Let's see, yeah. So overall. 00:24:43
The time phase for the RDA, January through May. 00:24:46
For the second one, May through September and then any. 00:24:50
What I'm calling project closeout. 00:24:53
What happened in? 00:24:55
In October, just. 00:24:57
Making sure that management has all their training, any questions that they need. 00:24:59
Hopefully. 00:25:03
I'm envisioning that as we. 00:25:06
Get these policies and procedures. 00:25:08
Up and running. 00:25:10
Management has looked through them, made any changes because again. 00:25:11
Management here in Vineyard. 00:25:15
They're the experts. 00:25:17
I'm going to be coming in. 00:25:18
With a. 00:25:20
An outside perspective. 00:25:21
Of what I think good policy is. But again. 00:25:23
It will need to be some back and forth with management. 00:25:26
They'll need to kind of wrap their arms around it and then hopefully bring it. 00:25:29
Eventually to the council for you guys to pass your. 00:25:33
Policy setting body here in the city. 00:25:36
So these dates might not be. 00:25:39
Exactly. But that's when I'm. 00:25:41
Shooting for one of the things I want to emphasize, we kind of talked about this in our meeting with the mayor. 00:25:43
The where we're at now. 00:25:50
Didn't happen overnight. 00:25:53
So Chris Harding's got a timeline up there. It may not. 00:25:55
Hold right to that it's not. This will not be something that's going to be solved. 00:25:59
Overnight with the RDA with these other. 00:26:04
Areas that need improvement. 00:26:08
But I think. 00:26:11
Vineyard has made a great first step. 00:26:12
Especially with where we're. 00:26:14
Last year. 00:26:16
And uh. 00:26:17
Yeah, I'd open it up for any questions that. 00:26:18
Council members of the mayor might have Awesome. Thank you so much for that presentation. Let's yeah open up for questions or. 00:26:21
Comments from the Council should we start? 00:26:27
Over here other you. 00:26:30
Let's start with Ezra. 00:26:32
Just as you were going through some of these policies. 00:26:39
How has it been working with staff? 00:26:43
The staff have been excellent. 00:26:46
I would say every time I had a question, especially Zach, was probably the one I worked with the most. 00:26:50
And that guy was Johnny on the spot. He most of the time he was turning stuff around either the same day or the next day. 00:26:56
I rarely had to wait for. 00:27:03
For Zach. 00:27:05
The other folks as well when I had questions for them. 00:27:07
They. 00:27:11
They were very responsive. 00:27:12
And and when I came out for interviews related to. 00:27:14
Travel and the vehicles, the interviews that I had. 00:27:18
They were very inviting, welcoming. Nobody was standoffish or. 00:27:22
Was like. 00:27:27
I'm not going to let you interview me. They were all very good to work with. So yeah, staff was great. 00:27:28
Great and. 00:27:36
When do you anticipate having a formal proposal? 00:27:37
For us to review. 00:27:41
The the formal proposal, I have sent something that is much more detailed than what's here to David. 00:27:44
Mayor and Jacob I. 00:27:52
I apologize I can send that out to the full council. That'd be great. Are all your guys's emails? 00:27:54
If I just go online. 00:27:58
Yeah, get him there. 00:28:00
Yeah. 00:28:01
Yeah. 00:28:03
We have one. It's like Vineyard council at Oh, OK. 00:28:05
Perfect, I will send it to that. 00:28:11
Thank you. That's it for me. 00:28:16
David. 00:28:18
Yes, thank you very much for that. 00:28:22
Great proposal and. 00:28:23
We've, I want to acknowledge we have received a proposal for us is a first. 00:28:25
The first project. 00:28:30
We have that in and I've. 00:28:31
I've asked the. 00:28:34
City manager in the past and and. 00:28:37
I asked staff to help us understand what the next steps were to be able to get. 00:28:40
To allocate dedicated funds at the RDA and that's. I've asked twice about that, but in the. 00:28:44
All the changeover stuff that's gotten. 00:28:50
Fall through the cracks, apparently. 00:28:51
So we do need to follow through on that and make sure and see what has to be done so we can get that money's allocated to be able 00:28:53
to. 00:28:56
Take it, Take that on. 00:28:59
We have the proposal as. 00:29:00
Excellent, I will. 00:29:02
I will share it with everyone. 00:29:03
Sure. Thank you. You have already and then Jacob Holloway has it already. 00:29:04
So I'll get to you SO. 00:29:09
Do we have a city manager right now? 00:29:11
We do. We have a city manager right now. 00:29:15
Well, I don't think we do at the moment, but we did. Eric is still. 00:29:17
Under contract. 00:29:23
So yeah, so we. 00:29:23
Sort of do. 00:29:25
It's nice to. 00:29:28
So anyway, but that was but yeah, we'll, we'll keep following up on that. Make that happen. 00:29:29
So we can go ahead, Jacob. No, I appreciate your work. 00:29:34
On the. 00:29:38
On the audit, it's, you know, the RDA is a really complex thing, so going forward. 00:29:38
Digging deep and finding a proper. 00:29:45
Procedures to put in place to make sure you know we know. 00:29:47
Where the money's going and. 00:29:50
Everything like that, I think my biggest. 00:29:52
Issue to RDA is the institutional knowledge it's. 00:29:55
It's been passed down by person to person and. 00:29:59
How do you see yourself tackling that? 00:30:02
It's going to be a lot of walkthroughs and interviews. The walkthrough I did last year. 00:30:04
Going out to. 00:30:13
I don't know specifically what site it was, but you can tell the workers that have been there even before it was an RDA when it 00:30:16
was an actual. 00:30:19
When the. 00:30:23
Steel mill Geneva still was up and running. 00:30:25
Like you can tell who has the institutional knowledge. 00:30:29
But it's going to be. 00:30:32
Hands down. 00:30:34
A lot of that where we're talking to individuals because I feel like. 00:30:35
The folks doing the work and the remediation will have the institutional knowledge. 00:30:40
I'm a little bit worried on the City side, who's got the institutional knowledge. 00:30:45
So. 00:30:50
Or yeah, I'm going to have to ask questions, do some interviews, might have to reach out to some folks that. 00:30:51
Might have left. 00:30:57
City service, but. 00:30:58
Sure. 00:31:00
We'll do the best we can. 00:31:01
Thank you. 00:31:02
Anything else that's going to happen? 00:31:03
Yeah. 00:31:07
Having served here for two years. 00:31:09
And. 00:31:11
I'm really grateful for all the citizens. I mean, I was kind of the. 00:31:13
He turned to this person and asked hard questions. 00:31:16
About our cars being a. 00:31:20
In Disneyland and in different places and. 00:31:22
Legally. Legally. 00:31:26
Because I just wanted to walk through this. 00:31:28
Because we didn't have any. 00:31:30
Policies in place. 00:31:32
All of the staff. 00:31:35
When citizens reported different things. 00:31:36
That wasn't against the policy, it was just there. I mean, there is no policy. 00:31:40
There was a. 00:31:45
There was. 00:31:46
Very brief, Paul. It was very light on on vehicles. It was more of the stance of like. 00:31:48
Yeah, I can't even say it's. 00:31:57
Like drivers should be safe, but that's not It was more than that. 00:31:59
But it was less than. 00:32:02
Like this is. 00:32:04
Than what you would find in a normal. 00:32:07
Fleet policy. 00:32:09
Keeping track of miles, making sure there's a. 00:32:11
A log, that is. 00:32:14
Verified or reconciled on a on a regular basis. I mean like how many miles total but like. 00:32:16
Somebody going home could. 00:32:22
Hey, we're. 00:32:24
Going to Vegas tonight and coming back and take the car and. 00:32:26
There's no policy against that. 00:32:29
Yeah, I mean, it might have raised some eyebrows, but again, that's why. 00:32:31
Good policy is so important because. 00:32:34
Even if you had someone dead to rights, you know you took the city vehicle to Disneyland. There the policy wasn't necessarily 00:32:37
saying city vehicles. 00:32:42
I mean, it would say stuff like it should be used for. 00:32:46
City business. 00:32:49
So I mean. 00:32:52
Technically, if you were riding with a coworker, you had a phone call discussing city business on your way to Disneyland. Now, let 00:32:53
me be clear too. 00:32:56
I did not in the in this. 00:33:00
Audit. 00:33:01
I we did not track a specific trip or a vehicle to Disneyland somebody might have. 00:33:02
Notice that or. 00:33:07
Allege that. 00:33:09
Right. I just want to be clear. Yeah, we did not note any vehicles in Disneyland. 00:33:10
One of the things we did notice was that like fuel UPS. 00:33:16
There were some pretty big fuel UPS like 100 plus gallons. 00:33:19
Most vehicles don't hold that. So I mean there were some questions that. 00:33:24
Probably should be asked, but even then there's no policy about right getting 100 gallons. And so therefore if there's no policy, 00:33:27
yes you can. I just want to make sure. 00:33:32
That staff don't feel like. 00:33:36
This is their fault because I mean, you know, when you have no policy. 00:33:39
In place people, you know, citizens need to understand that this is not on them if they're seeing. 00:33:43
A vehicle. I mean, obviously people might feel like how is there no policy, but the buck stops at the council and the mayor level, 00:33:48
yeah. 00:33:51
I mean, I'm not in the business of setting up cities, but vineyards relatively new and I mean when you think about getting a city 00:33:55
up and running, which I. 00:33:59
Have never really thought about it before, but there's probably some important things that supersede policies like. 00:34:03
Do we have clean water? You know, is the natural gas line going to explode? Our contractors, you know, building houses that are 00:34:09
safe and structures that are safe. 00:34:13
You know, policy comes a little bit after, but I think now is definitely the right time that. 00:34:19
The city's up and running. 00:34:23
It is appropriate to have good policies now going forward and to make sure people are held accountable. Yeah, I would not say the 00:34:25
staff should feel bad. 00:34:29
Right. Any sense? 00:34:34
Having said that, we're in kind of a limbo until September of getting a new policy in place. Like that's a long, we can probably 00:34:35
move a little quicker. I mean uncertain things like. 00:34:40
You know, because obviously I think the Council has an appetite for just. 00:34:45
You know, ensuring. 00:34:49
That, you know, it's not just. 00:34:51
The cars. 00:34:53
So I would. 00:34:55
If we could prioritize those easy P card. 00:34:56
Yeah, I first vehicle we should be able to prioritize those because a lot of it too is. 00:35:01
I'm going to be familiar with the policy. 00:35:07
It'll be good to get it. 00:35:10
Quickly and upfront. 00:35:12
Into the hands of the respective staff who are going to have it so they can start digesting it and saying. 00:35:13
Hey, yeah, this will work for us or hey. 00:35:19
Right here. This doesn't really apply to Vineyard. We don't do XY and Z. 00:35:21
OK. How should we modify it so that we'll fit Vineyard? 00:35:25
And help help. 00:35:28
Management to understand. 00:35:30
And to look for ways. 00:35:32
That they can be. 00:35:34
A control where? 00:35:35
Again, we're not just putting a policy out there. 00:35:37
That people might read once or never read and it just sits there. 00:35:40
But that it will call for certain procedures a monthly. 00:35:44
Check of the vehicle mileage logs or whatever and how we're going to reconcile those, Yeah. 00:35:48
Yeah, because. 00:35:53
As people, I mean, we're going to talk about the Ledger and stuff coming up that like as, as people looked at total spend, it was 00:35:54
like. 00:35:57
How do you have a control on that? I mean, as a City Council member? 00:36:00
You know, we would look at these massive. 00:36:03
Logs but. 00:36:05
Could you maybe report a little about about? 00:36:07
The inability just because of records to even understand. 00:36:10
How many miles? And because we're just not. 00:36:13
Keeping logs of. 00:36:15
Right to my understanding like for the again the vehicles, the mileage logs is that. 00:36:17
The miles was checked on an annual basis. 00:36:22
There's a lot that can happen in a year. 00:36:24
Only. 00:36:27
Each vehicle. 00:36:28
Once a year. 00:36:30
Of like total miles. 00:36:31
Right and the. 00:36:33
The card The fuel cards were assigned to the vehicles. 00:36:35
Which can be, I mean, there's positive negatives to both, but it's like. 00:36:39
Well, who has access to the vehicle? How do you know who's doing the filling up? 00:36:43
How do you know that? 00:36:48
When this guy or gal. 00:36:50
Takes the car to fill it up. 00:36:52
You know that they're not filling up the vehicle and then having. 00:36:54
You know, kid pulling afterwards and filling them up. We have to implement certain controls into the policy to make sure that 00:36:58
those risks are mitigated. And again, it's just a question mark with where it is right now. We, we don't know. 00:37:04
There's stuff that can seem a little off. 00:37:11
But you can't prove it one way or the other one that. 00:37:14
Everything is in check. 00:37:16
There's nothing to worry about. 00:37:18
But you also can't. 00:37:19
You can't. You can't. 00:37:21
Do that because there's no supporting documentation. 00:37:22
But on the other way unless. 00:37:25
Somebody's got a camcorder and can see a. 00:37:26
You know someone with a Vineyard gas card? We didn't find that either, but it raises questions and. 00:37:29
Puts it out into the residents minds for sure. 00:37:34
I'm the thing, and I was just going to talk to Parker is like. 00:37:38
You know, with the citizens concerns coming in, it was also an overall. 00:37:42
Art of like. 00:37:47
What is the policy of how many cars? Who gets them? Department head staff? 00:37:48
And just an overall public awareness of? 00:37:53
Was this included in their compensation? Was this not? 00:37:58
And so I just think as we go through the budget, I don't know, I wanted to talk about this publicly that. 00:38:02
In your budget, who's over fleet and those decisions? Is that the mayor? Is it you and just assigning like. 00:38:08
Because is that part of the deal That is the council? We've got 60 staff. 00:38:16
Members SO. 00:38:20
Our fleet's not very big. I think we could just make that decision collectively, right? But. 00:38:21
Who's putting that together before the budget and. 00:38:26
Presenting that back of. 00:38:29
The amount of cars and. 00:38:30
And who gets a? 00:38:32
Who gets a gas card? 00:38:34
Or what controls are over or wonder controls of those on a? 00:38:36
On a department level basis. 00:38:40
Yeah, You know, serving here for two years, it was just. 00:38:42
Having a policy of that and knowing. 00:38:46
As a. 00:38:49
Legislative and financial body that. 00:38:50
Authorized that it was more of just. 00:38:53
Here's gas and it's like a. 00:38:55
The council had given that to the mayor of Just. 00:38:57
She had over. 00:39:00
Overall, and I would like the council to have yeah authority over that without a blank gas card, right Budgets A limiting factor 00:39:01
on that too. So yeah, you have that control at least we. 00:39:07
Set the budget. 00:39:12
Yeah, we have 25 staff that drive vehicles or whatever. I don't know the exact number, but it's. 00:39:13
All mostly going to be in public works and then directors so. 00:39:18
I think we can. 00:39:21
Handle that pretty efficiently. 00:39:22
Yeah, that's all. 00:39:24
Parker. 00:39:26
Chris, I appreciate you coming tonight. 00:39:27
I would be remiss if I didn't ask some of the questions that I'm going to ask. 00:39:30
For the benefit of the public, I have the. 00:39:33
91 pages of your your findings in front of me. 00:39:37
But I don't think that the majority of residents are. 00:39:41
Reading that as they go to bed at night like I am. 00:39:45
So can I ask? 00:39:49
Could you just explain briefly? 00:39:51
What's the difference between the fact finding work that you've already done? 00:39:52
And the proposal for the next audit versus maybe like a? 00:39:56
Forensic audit or a financial audit in depth? Yeah. So financial audit like is on the city financial statements. 00:40:01
They're looking at and I'm. 00:40:09
Going to be. 00:40:10
Grossly general with this. Like they're verifying bank balances, fund balances. 00:40:13
Like if Vineyard says we have $10,000 in our savings account. 00:40:18
They're gonna write. 00:40:22
A correspondence to the bank and the bank is going to correspond directly with the CPA firm. 00:40:23
And and so at the end of it they can give. 00:40:29
An opinion on your financial statements that. 00:40:32
These. 00:40:35
Funds these accounts. 00:40:36
Are accurately represented that it's not just vineyards word but this outside firm has. 00:40:37
Given their opinion, they have. 00:40:45
Verified. 00:40:48
These balances not through. 00:40:50
Vineyard, but through. 00:40:52
Corresponding like for example with the bank. 00:40:54
A forensic audit. 00:40:58
That's. 00:41:00
A whole nother ball of wax. 00:41:02
You're talking about preparing audit findings. 00:41:04
That will. 00:41:07
Hold up to and stand up in court. 00:41:08
That's going to involve working with. 00:41:11
Attorneys, I mean your work papers have to. 00:41:13
Follow like a chain of custody. 00:41:17
Type Scenario 2. 00:41:19
That those can stand up in court. 00:41:22
The work that I performed was much less in scope. There was number audit opinion given the agreed upon procedure portion. 00:41:25
The smaller report. 00:41:32
Is again just that fact based. 00:41:34
There's no opinions. 00:41:36
Essentially the testing we did. 00:41:38
Is what it? 00:41:40
What it was? 00:41:41
That's the supplemental. The Long report, The supplemental. 00:41:43
Observations and recommendations. 00:41:47
It is again, not an opinion. 00:41:49
But it's. 00:41:52
Exactly what the name says. There are observations that as an accountant, as a. 00:41:54
A CPA or certified internal auditor, Certified fraud examiners. You see stuff as your. 00:41:59
Performing field work. It's that. 00:42:04
This is probably not. 00:42:07
A Best practice the way you're running stuff. 00:42:09
Like cash for example. Cash is one of the ones it. 00:42:13
Wasn't just light on the policy, there just was no policy. 00:42:16
So it's an observation to say hey. 00:42:20
Best practices. You should probably have a cash policy. Here's what should entail. 00:42:23
An observation without having a cash policy, maybe you can't hold people accountable. Maybe. 00:42:28
The lines get blurred when someone takes cash over the counter and makes the deposit. 00:42:34
You know, maybe we're aware of segregation of duties, but. 00:42:39
These other two guys were out sick or this one was on vacation. 00:42:43
The reconciliation at the end of the month needs to get done even though I was making the deposits and taking the cash like. 00:42:46
And we're going to blur those lines. 00:42:52
When you see stuff like that, it's. 00:42:54
An observation and. 00:42:57
You know, here's a recommendation. We would encourage you. 00:42:58
To put. 00:43:01
Specifically, which employees should handle which functions? 00:43:02
And then to make it a policy that. 00:43:05
There's no crossover. Maybe you delegate. 00:43:07
Secondary positions if this one's sick or this one's out, or maybe you just wait. 00:43:10
A couple of days to do a reconciliation, so. 00:43:15
Yeah, they're they're just recommendations. 00:43:19
Management always has the. 00:43:22
Council members or. 00:43:24
In discussion with management, they always have the. 00:43:27
The. 00:43:30
If they want to accept that risk. 00:43:34
Versus to mitigate it. 00:43:36
The auditor. 00:43:38
My position isn't to say. 00:43:40
You know, these are half-to's. These are these are suggestions what will improve the. 00:43:41
I don't know transparency and accountability of the city but. 00:43:47
It's definitely not an opinion. 00:43:50
You could do an audit work that would require an opinion like. 00:43:52
For us up in Salt Lake County. 00:43:56
All of our audits. 00:43:58
Are done in compliance with GAGAS. 00:43:59
But. 00:44:02
Again, it's a. It's a much. 00:44:02
Higher level assurance. 00:44:04
That comes with needing a peer review every three years. 00:44:07
The work that I did here in Vineyard much less. 00:44:10
In. 00:44:13
In scope than that. 00:44:16
An agreed upon procedures. 00:44:17
Hopefully that helps. 00:44:20
Absolutely in the course of. 00:44:21
These types of audits, do you ever come across anything that would maybe trigger you to say, hey, we should pursue A forensic 00:44:23
audit or I should recommend that recommendation? Yeah. 00:44:27
Yeah, we nothing in this audit came up. It was again. 00:44:31
I'll equate it to like. 00:44:38
If I observe someone driving around in a car without a seat belt. 00:44:41
The risk that if something happens. 00:44:45
And you get in an accent you probably. 00:44:48
Your chances of survival. 00:44:51
Go way down if you're not wearing a seat belt. 00:44:53
I saw plenty of instances throughout the city and what I looked at essentially where I observed people not wearing a seat belt as 00:44:57
they were driving car. I'm using a metaphor. It's not the greatest. 00:45:01
But I did not witness any accidents if that helps. Like and and out. 00:45:06
Allegation of fraud. Like I didn't see somebody at the till grabbing a. 00:45:11
Fistful of cash and putting it in their pocket. 00:45:15
But. 00:45:18
Could it have been there? Yes. 00:45:20
Can I prove it? Nope. 00:45:21
So that's important to keep in mind. Again, I go back to that, it's just a question mark. 00:45:23
And if you can't? 00:45:28
Give a reasonable amount of assurance to the public. 00:45:30
To you as the council to Co workers. 00:45:35
Then it it it's just a breeding ground for a. 00:45:39
An environment that. 00:45:42
Doesn't have good controls and doesn't breed a lot of. 00:45:43
Trust in government, and that's what we're trying to fix. Sorry. 00:45:47
For the benefit of the residents, what specific benefit does the additional? 00:45:51
Audit into the RDA. Provide the city as a whole. 00:45:56
Where we left it off last year was kind of just. 00:46:01
Scratching the surface to say. 00:46:05
Like the billing packages. 00:46:08
That I call them. 00:46:11
A check that the RDA. 00:46:13
Wrote out to the contractor who's performing the work. 00:46:15
To say, here's the kind of documentation. 00:46:19
And supporting documents we do have. 00:46:21
Let me give you an example. 00:46:26
One of the subcontractors. 00:46:28
That is in charge of hauling away. 00:46:30
Like concrete? 00:46:34
For example. 00:46:35
They would submit. 00:46:36
Bills. 00:46:39
Through the. 00:46:40
I'm going to call them the prime contractor. I might not be using the right lingo through Anderson Geneva saying we hauled away 00:46:42
10,000 lbs of of concrete. 00:46:46
Well, that's a cost to Anderson Geneva that they pass on through to the RDA. 00:46:51
And. 00:46:55
That might be a line item and. 00:46:56
From their subcontractor to Anderson Geneva that then builds the RDA. 00:46:58
But as I go in and look. 00:47:03
Something that I would look for that would substantiate that would be like a scale. 00:47:05
Take it to way in and way out when I drop a. 00:47:10
Down in South Jordan where I live when I go to the Transjordan landfill. 00:47:13
I pull my trailer on. 00:47:18
They give me a ticket saying I'm about. 00:47:19
I don't know, 12,500 lbs. 00:47:22
Dump my trash and I come out and I'm £10,000. That's that's somebody. 00:47:24
Who's a third party? 00:47:29
Saying. 00:47:31
You dumped 2500 lbs of stuff here. There were no scale tickets. 00:47:31
For an example. 00:47:36
So the contractor could have put. 00:47:37
And again, I'm just using an example. They could have put 10,000 on the bill. They could have put 15,000. I'm saying that in the 00:47:40
packet that I have. 00:47:44
There was stuff that. 00:47:48
Was missing. 00:47:50
Sometimes the packets didn't have. 00:47:51
Any invoices? It was just an e-mail. 00:47:54
Listing out some. 00:47:57
Services or remediation that was performed and an amount. 00:48:00
And in those cases, I just said, look, there was no invoices. It was literally just an e-mail with numbers. 00:48:04
And how do we substantiate that? 00:48:10
This second goal. 00:48:12
Is going to be again. 00:48:14
We budgeted about 300 hours. That's almost the entire. 00:48:16
Hours that were budgeted for that first endeavor. 00:48:21
Just focusing on the RDA. 00:48:24
There it won't be. 00:48:26
At the end of this, well, it's a question mark. 00:48:28
We'll have spent significant time. 00:48:31
Interviewing not just Anderson, Geneva, but other folks here in the city. 00:48:33
Possibly subcontractors and that's The thing is we're going to have to work that out. 00:48:38
With the folks doing the remediation. 00:48:43
I mean. 00:48:46
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but they. 00:48:48
That I have no ability to. 00:48:50
Compel them to let me into their facilities to open up their books and records. 00:48:53
So there might be. 00:48:57
A little bit of negotiation there. 00:48:59
But by the end of it, the hope is that. 00:49:01
How it will benefit the residents is we'll have some. 00:49:04
A better understanding of what support is there. 00:49:07
For them. 00:49:12
Understood. That helps to answer that absolutely. One of the concerns of the City Council right now is making sure that we are 00:49:14
trimming the budget and and not spending excessively. 00:49:19
And in the scope of work that you've provided, we're looking at, you know, $100,000 bill that the taxpayers have to foot. 00:49:24
In your professional opinion, do you suspect that we see a return on the investment as far as as we implement best practices that 00:49:31
mitigates some of the spending and losses? Yeah. 00:49:36
So the return on investment? 00:49:43
I'm going to say for sure there will be a return on investment, but it is. 00:49:45
It is hard to. 00:49:49
Observe. 00:49:52
In that. 00:49:54
When where you're going from not having any policy? 00:49:55
Like for cash handling or how you're going to manage your fleet again, there was. 00:49:59
A brief. 00:50:04
Policy on fleet. 00:50:05
To going to a robust policy. 00:50:06
Where you have checks and balances. 00:50:09
And and. 00:50:12
And you have that program or? 00:50:13
Whatever lockdown. 00:50:16
There is a return on investment there. 00:50:19
But it doesn't. It's hard to calculate that dollar amount. 00:50:22
It's a lot easier. My I spent 16 years on the federal government auditing defense contracts. That was really easy because we'd go 00:50:26
in there and find where. 00:50:31
Maybe a defense contractor had overbuild the government that you know, proverbial $300.00 for a hammer and. 00:50:36
We saw it at Kmart for 25 bucks. 00:50:42
We could go in and question those costs. 00:50:45
Than our administrative contracting officer would go and negotiate with the. 00:50:48
Contractor and they'd get some money back and we could say yeah. 00:50:53
That's tied right to our findings. It's a little bit more difficult with this, but. 00:50:57
Yeah, there's definitely return on investment just. 00:51:03
Hard to calculate. 00:51:05
But if you're in business and you know. 00:51:08
The importance of good policies and procedures. 00:51:10
Like this is a necessary thing you have to do. 00:51:15
Understood. 00:51:18
In your opinion? 00:51:19
And based on the the findings that you've already had. 00:51:20
Where do you think is the highest priority that the Council should be focused on right now? Is it the P cards? Is it the travel? 00:51:23
So out of all the areas. 00:51:34
The RDA is by far the biggest dollar amount and probably the biggest question mark from from those. 00:51:37
Other 6 areas. 00:51:43
I would say. 00:51:45
Probably. 00:51:47
It's probably a toss up between. 00:51:48
Vehicle travel and the P card. The P card has probably the most transactions. 00:51:51
I mean, but some of them are very. 00:51:57
Very small. 00:51:59
Couple of bucks. 00:52:00
Eating out or buying? 00:52:02
Things for events the city's holding, but some of them will, you know. 00:52:05
Pretty large. A drone show. 00:52:08
You know, for $20,000. 00:52:10
That's yeah, yeah. 00:52:13
Significant. 00:52:15
That's all my questions, only questions. 00:52:16
I have a just a follow up. Does your? 00:52:19
Your firm provide any. 00:52:21
Of those kind of ROA services or ROI services. 00:52:23
On uh. 00:52:27
Stuff like that. Would you be able to like for example? 00:52:29
Run that cost benefit analysis as you go through and help implement some of these policies and kind of give us an estimate at 00:52:31
least of yeah, here's how much. 00:52:35
Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, yeah. 00:52:39
That's basically. Here's how much. 00:52:41
Was. 00:52:43
You know a part of this policy. Here's how much it's under the influence of this policy. 00:52:44
Yeah. As far as like a dollar amount, what we've seen change based on the policy implementation or stuff like that? 00:52:49
Yeah, well, that's a good point you could probably see. 00:52:54
You know. 00:52:58
If it is much more defined. 00:52:59
On what can go? 00:53:02
On AP card and what's appropriate? 00:53:03
And maybe like with the food. 00:53:06
When it's appropriate to. 00:53:08
Have food brought in for a meeting. 00:53:11
You could definitely do some analysis and say here's what we were spending. 00:53:14
You know, on a yearly basis before we had these policies. Here's what we're spending now. 00:53:18
But again, that's not going to happen right at the end of the audit. It'll probably take a year or two. 00:53:23
To be able to do some sort of analysis, but yeah. 00:53:28
We could do an analysis like that. We could look at and tell you. 00:53:31
Per section, how much? 00:53:35
The city spending on an annual basis in those areas right now. 00:53:37
If that would help. 00:53:41
Yeah, just as you go through the policy having some sort of. 00:53:43
Like estimated projection I think could be really helpful and. 00:53:46
Kind of help us know where we should. 00:53:48
Start our focus as we I mean. 00:53:50
It's a lot to focus on in the course of a year and we might as well. 00:53:52
Get the lowest hanging fruit first. 00:53:55
And I noticed you said that the RDA was by far the biggest. 00:53:57
Threat or question mark where you called it? 00:54:02
For dollar amount. 00:54:06
For sure. Yeah, we're talking. 00:54:08
10s of millions of dollars there versus. 00:54:11
So that would be the highest priority in your opinion? 00:54:15
Yeah. And I think that's a good structure we talked about this last time. 00:54:18
How you presented it. 00:54:22
Because I mean. 00:54:24
Comparing. 00:54:25
The policies to the RDA, like the RDA, is really its own. 00:54:26
Its own separate thing and so I think. 00:54:29
I mean, I like. 00:54:31
What you displayed in your presentation? How that would be? 00:54:32
Just to focus all on its own. 00:54:36
As well. 00:54:38
So I I have one more question so. 00:54:39
Because our policy doesn't state that these trucks need to be. 00:54:47
Weighed in. 00:54:50
Or the invoices have to be. 00:54:53
Given and we got the claim last year that. 00:54:56
Trucks were going. 00:55:01
We were paying for. 00:55:03
A year and trucks weren't moving yet invoices are being paid. We don't know if that claims true or not true. 00:55:06
But that claim has come in and that's I think it's important that citizens understand that. 00:55:12
If we have no policy in place to require any of that. 00:55:17
Right. 00:55:21
You're talking million, I mean. 00:55:22
If you're saying 10s of millions. 00:55:24
Is it fraud that if there's no. 00:55:26
Policy, Yeah. 00:55:29
Yeah, not to my knowledge. And again, I'm not an attorney. 00:55:33
When you're talking about fraud that's proved in a court of law, I mean that involves like. 00:55:37
Somebody's intent. 00:55:41
Again. 00:55:44
Regardless of what we find. 00:55:47
No city policy was broken again because. 00:55:49
Because there is no remember, Holdaway said. But that's why I say like return on investment, it's like. 00:55:51
If we don't have any of those policies and we can't go in and look at, I think that's why his work is so important is because. 00:55:56
Sitting down with each one and understanding it and having. 00:56:03
An independent outside. 00:56:07
From the RDA of going OK. 00:56:09
Here's a specialist. 00:56:11
We're running. 00:56:13
What I believe is the largest RDA in the state of Utah. 00:56:14
Out of small little vineyard. Big. 00:56:17
And I think the results of your first audit prove that. 00:56:19
Maybe we're not capable, and that's OK. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just admit. 00:56:23
Your abilities to do so, and I think citizens should understand that that this is. 00:56:28
It's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength to say. 00:56:33
Look, we've got to stop what we're doing and put the literal shovel down on cleanup. 00:56:37
We have, I mean, because we. 00:56:42
I don't know that we're saying that. I think we're saying that we're trying to be responsible here. Be responsible, Yeah. And look 00:56:44
at it and say what we're trying to trying to rectify. Deficiencies have gone in the past of where they're at. We expect to find 00:56:49
evidence of fraud, but we want to make sure that we're set up so that we could if we needed to. 00:56:55
Yeah, yeah. 00:57:00
Correct. Yeah, that's better, better put and I would say with with the RDA again. So this is. 00:57:01
Not anything. 00:57:08
That I'm proving this is Chris Harding's take on the situation, and you see this a lot in not just city governments, but county 00:57:09
and federal. 00:57:13
State. 00:57:17
Where? 00:57:19
You get people that come in. 00:57:19
And well, this is how my predecessor did it. This is how I was trained. 00:57:21
What I'm talking about here is like when. 00:57:27
A bill was submitted for reimbursement to the RDA. 00:57:29
The support that I saw. 00:57:34
In these. 00:57:36
Packets. 00:57:37
Like the RDA would have an e-mail and they're saying. 00:57:38
Hey, this this bill's OK to pay. 00:57:41
In some instances you could see where. 00:57:44
The finance director had done some math checks. Sometimes she was like, oh, on this one, we're only paying like. 00:57:46
75% of the bill. And so you could, you could tell some cursory things were done, but it was like. 00:57:53
Did they have a? 00:57:59
A set of. 00:58:00
Criteria that they were looking for? How did they test invoices? 00:58:02
And it seemed like a lot of the times they weren't so when you step back and look at it. 00:58:06
It's again, it's not. 00:58:11
That they were. 00:58:12
Not following policy because there was none, but it was probably stuff they had learned to do stuff from. 00:58:13
Their predecessors? 00:58:19
And so when you step back. 00:58:20
We were we. 00:58:23
The city as they approve these bills. 00:58:24
For reimbursement. 00:58:27
For the work going on in the RDA. 00:58:28
It was. 00:58:30
A whole lot of trust. 00:58:32
I'm you know, surely the the people doing the work know what they do are doing. 00:58:33
And that, you know, these bills are accurate and correct, we're going to reimburse them. 00:58:38
But when push comes to shove, there wasn't a lot of supporting documentation to show that. 00:58:45
Folks from the city were doing. 00:58:49
Kind of what I would call. 00:58:51
Their due diligence, I know that's a legal term and I'm not a lawyer, but I'm going to use it. Yeah, we were doing our due 00:58:52
diligence to protect ourselves and. 00:58:56
Make sure that these bills were accurate. I mean at the very least like. 00:59:01
Are we making sure that some. 00:59:05
That this list of numbers wasn't. 00:59:07
Fat fingered in an area you know. 00:59:09
Was there a? 00:59:12
A receipt from A10 key showing that. 00:59:13
Someone had verified all the numbers just mathematically. 00:59:15
No, there wasn't. So we're relying on everything from math to supports. Well, I just want to end with. That's why I think it's 00:59:18
important to set the table that even if you do go and find that because of the lack of policies. 00:59:24
I mean. 00:59:30
You know, citizens. 00:59:31
Elected us, but elected me. 00:59:34
Two years ago to go in and they asked these hard questions. 00:59:35
And I know we pushed for a year politically to get you. 00:59:39
To be able to do that first one. 00:59:43
But I also wanted to lay expectations for citizens that even. 00:59:45
At the end of the day, one of the hardest things. 00:59:49
Like 6 months ago. 00:59:52
In finding out that there were. 00:59:53
No policies in place. It was. 00:59:55
We're in a much world of hurt because if there were policies back, OK, great. 00:59:58
Hey, they're being broken and. 01:00:02
You know. 01:00:04
Fraud occurs or something you can hold them to accountable. It's actually much worse than that. It's. 01:00:05
In my opinion, because it's. 01:00:09
There has been. 01:00:11
From the beginning. 01:00:12
There has been no policies in place with a multi $1,000,000. 01:00:14
And we're talking. 01:00:18
Hundreds of millions of dollars. 01:00:20
And I think we need to state this on the record. 01:00:22
This is 10s of millions of dollars from Alpine School District. 01:00:26
This is. 01:00:29
Millions of dollars from. 01:00:31
Utah County. 01:00:34
This is just not our money. 01:00:35
That we have been stewards over. 01:00:38
With no policies. 01:00:41
And so even if you come back. 01:00:43
And say hey this is. 01:00:45
The ability for those taxpayers? 01:00:48
Of Alpine School District. 01:00:51
It were. 01:00:53
So the $100,000 to put those policies in place? 01:00:54
It's a no brainer you you can't just continue to do a. 01:00:59
$100 million project because. 01:01:03
You know, some of the documents that we're finding are. 01:01:05
Are committing 900 million to this effort. 01:01:07
You know whether we know if it was extended the right way from 300 to 900. 01:01:10
And if that was extended the correct way. 01:01:16
We've got to ascertain that to get to its. 01:01:19
And so. 01:01:24
Yeah, this is a big. 01:01:26
Thing. Can I add something? You mentioned forensic audits. 01:01:28
I think. 01:01:33
It might be helpful to to kind of dive into this distinction a little bit. 01:01:34
And maybe even consider. 01:01:38
Doing a forensic audit, I mean if like. 01:01:40
Like your goal, your firm is to. 01:01:42
Help us move forward. 01:01:46
In the best way, right? 01:01:47
If we want to go through and kind of evaluate how? 01:01:49
Did the things of the past line up with state code? 01:01:52
How did the things of the past line up with all these? 01:01:55
I mean, we're subject to. 01:01:57
All the governmental policies. 01:01:58
From the state regard, regardless of whether we have our own city policies on top of those. 01:02:00
There's still a number of mechanisms that government agencies have to follow. We still submit our finance records to. 01:02:05
An independent CPA firm and still get those opinions and we submit our data to the state auditor's website as well, which will. 01:02:11
We'll hear more about coming forward. 01:02:18
Do we want to have a forensic audit? 01:02:22
Of the history of the RDA and see if we can find a firm that can do that. 01:02:24
And really dive into. 01:02:28
Hey, here's. 01:02:30
Here's the history, if we want to say. 01:02:31
Like I don't, I don't want this to just be like an open question of. 01:02:33
Hey, maybe there's fraud, maybe there's not fraud. Like, let's just go find. 01:02:37
Whatever it is we're looking for and actually do that deep dive because there's. 01:02:40
Firms that are available to do that. 01:02:43
I don't think yours is one of them and won't do it for this price point of course, but. 01:02:45
Why not just like? 01:02:49
Would you, would you guys want to go through that effort and. 01:02:52
Try to find a firm that could do that. 01:02:55
I think the. 01:02:59
Kind of where I'm at with it. 01:03:00
That's a great. 01:03:02
Question, Ezra. 01:03:02
Having. 01:03:05
Seen forensic audits happen? It's. 01:03:06
I think that there's definitely. 01:03:11
The intent of the kind of word, the end goal of where we need to get. 01:03:12
Is a community. 01:03:17
And is a city. 01:03:18
Is we've got to restore our residents trust. 01:03:19
In our government. 01:03:22
And it's been. 01:03:24
Clear to me. 01:03:26
Especially over the last little bit is I've. 01:03:28
Looked into and been in the mayor's seat that. 01:03:29
There's some deficiencies. 01:03:33
And I think I like what you said earlier. 01:03:35
You were talking about. 01:03:37
You know these problems didn't happen overnight. 01:03:38
Right. And it's not. 01:03:41
Realistic to try to fix them. 01:03:43
Overnight. 01:03:45
So I think that. 01:03:46
To Councilman Nair's point. 01:03:47
Should we go deeper? 01:03:49
I think that that. 01:03:51
Is a. 01:03:52
Good question. 01:03:53
I I. 01:03:56
Kind of where I. 01:03:57
Think I. 01:03:58
Where Chris will. 01:04:01
Definitely help us and be a benefit to the. 01:04:03
Effort of rebuilding trust. 01:04:06
Is helping us to. 01:04:08
Start looking into this and see if there's. 01:04:10
A bigger, more deeper issues that we need to dig into. 01:04:14
Because I think that. 01:04:17
A lot of it too. It's there. There are many mechanisms of government to. 01:04:19
Oversee and stuff like that, but. 01:04:23
Where the specific where I like where this? 01:04:26
Proposal wise is looking. 01:04:29
The next layer down, the second tier subcontractor. 01:04:31
And making sure that that. 01:04:36
All matches up and we can have some certainty that. 01:04:37
Those services were provided. 01:04:42
And the taxpayers are receiving that benefit. 01:04:44
So I don't know if I have an answer. 01:04:48
Or. 01:04:52
Can I ask direction, oh Mayor? 01:04:53
Yeah. So can I ask a question, Mr. Hardin? Sure, please. So. 01:04:54
The proposed. 01:04:58
Your proposed audit would be doing for the idea right now this this. 01:05:00
Would, would at the completion of this, would there be a better indication of whether it would be appropriate to do a forensic 01:05:03
audit or would I think and we'd definitely be in a better position and and. 01:05:09
I'll put it this way, if there was a forensic auditor in the room, I. 01:05:15
I'd say let's. 01:05:18
Ask his opinion on this, I don't know is there? 01:05:20
Here here's my take on it is. 01:05:23
If you got a forensic auditor, a lot of the. 01:05:26
Preliminary work they would do is the same work. 01:05:28
I'm proposing right here. 01:05:31
Going in. 01:05:32
Looking to try and. 01:05:34
Substantiate some of these costs. See what? 01:05:36
Supporting documentation is there whether it's invoice or scales or seeing what work has been completed, looking at agreements. 01:05:39
That preliminary work they're going to do. 01:05:46
Anyways, until they come upon stuff that. 01:05:48
OK. Can we start building a case that would go to court? 01:05:51
So I would say. 01:05:56
The work. 01:06:01
I'm planning to do would go along with that. 01:06:03
If you got a forensic auditor, they'd probably be doing a lot of this stuff anyways. 01:06:06
With the anticipation. 01:06:11
We need to find something. 01:06:13
Before we can start doing the forensic. 01:06:16
Auditing. Uh, uh. 01:06:18
Part of this job. 01:06:19
And so this audit would lead us to. 01:06:21
To understand if we needed to or not. 01:06:24
As well, Yeah. 01:06:26
I think so. 01:06:27
Definitely OK. 01:06:28
I wanted to make one more or you're next. 01:06:31
Councilman Nair I think is smart to not take it off the table but. 01:06:36
I think it's premature to like. 01:06:40
Where in. 01:06:42
The people that have approached us with the claims, I think we've turned them over and. 01:06:45
Talked about those. 01:06:50
I have no problem if we need to have the citizens go through those claims, but until they're. 01:06:52
Warranted or theirs? 01:06:57
You know, the smoke turns into more. 01:06:58
I but what? 01:07:02
What I would say, and I think citizens need to understand, or maybe our community could. 01:07:04
Could do better. 01:07:09
Is. 01:07:11
The most money in our cities, not in our city. It's an RDA. Like our RDA is a huge, massive entity. 01:07:12
And I'm concerned about the. 01:07:18
Lack of knowledge and. 01:07:22
The the from our citizens to wrap their heads, their hands around. 01:07:24
Just how big this is and how concept? 01:07:30
Sequential it is. 01:07:33
And even to get to this point, like what a victory it was to. 01:07:34
You know, because now we've uncovered and today it's like. 01:07:40
There's no policies on $100 million. Like there's not the right policy, you know? 01:07:44
But it took us a lot to get to be able to even to admit this and. 01:07:48
Today's meeting, like, you know what I mean? It's like. 01:07:53
And how much argument that that had? And I think the other thing that in sitting and learning down is like. 01:07:56
And I mean this not nothing against you, Zach, but. 01:08:02
We can't have the mayor or just our mayor. 01:08:06
Over hundreds of millions of dollars and like what are those safeguards even those act we we think you're an honest person. 01:08:09
And even the council I'm concerned about, just as us as an RDA direct an RDA board. 01:08:16
The. 01:08:23
Few citizens that come to this meeting to understand it. 01:08:24
I'm extremely concerned about. 01:08:27
The taxpayers of Alpine School District, that they had no idea that this how this is operating. We don't notice them. 01:08:30
This is their money that has been. 01:08:37
You know, the way it's been managed. 01:08:40
I don't even know if we're even telling them. 01:08:43
You know how how that is? 01:08:45
The way it was extended. 01:08:47
From. 01:08:49
300 to 900 How? 01:08:50
For notifications even sent out that we're going to take an additional 600 million to them. 01:08:52
I would be ******. 01:08:57
You know, in looking through the document, the lack of documentation that's there. 01:08:59
And these things sound so foolish to say. 01:09:03
Because I remember when we started to say it in Carsten Walker and others started to say. 01:09:07
I'm not seeing any, you know, documentation of that and so. 01:09:11
I think this is the right path. But the second thing I wanted to add is you keep saying like there's a financial component, 01:09:15
there's a financial component. 01:09:19
And I don't know if. 01:09:22
Today's meeting is. 01:09:24
Is this? 01:09:25
Telling citizens that there's a legal component to it. 01:09:26
But also there's a. 01:09:29
There's a not a political, but like a. 01:09:31
I don't know how to describe it, but a. 01:09:35
Process or a decision? 01:09:37
And I just want to explain this. 01:09:39
If you go years ago when the RDA was created. 01:09:42
OK, or when most Rdas are created? 01:09:45
Mayor, have a point of order. 01:09:47
So, Councilman Holdaway, I know you want to go over the history of this. Well, I just want to describe it. I know you want to. 01:09:50
But I'm gonna say, wouldn't that be a better time? 01:09:55
And how it go over the governance of the RDA, well, I'll just wrap this. Our issue right now is to take care of this aspect. 01:09:58
There's lots more time and many more things to be done with the RDA and maybe this would be better addressed then. 01:10:04
Is that OK? Yeah, that's fine. I'll wrap up in 30 seconds. 01:10:10
What I'll just say is. 01:10:14
And thanks. 01:10:15
Usually when you're talking about such a large sum of money. 01:10:18
Texas Instruments. 01:10:23
Facebook. 01:10:25
Or some big thing for the community? 01:10:26
When the original RDA was created, it was we're cleaning up Geneva still for 300 million. 01:10:29
Out of the blue, it expands to we're going from 300 to 900. 01:10:35
If you ask the average citizen, they don't know that that happened a year or two years ago. 01:10:40
So how can we as an RDA board? 01:10:45
Have that power and authority to go that big. 01:10:48
When yes, you're authorized or if documents happen. 01:10:51
But how do citizens not known? So I think. 01:10:55
There's a, there's a legal component, but then there's also a. We need to be very public. 01:10:57
When this comes back to help citizens. 01:11:02
Just knowledge and education of it because what are they getting back for it? Like what? 01:11:06
What are the public interests in? 01:11:11
In the RDA. 01:11:14
Because that's not even defined. 01:11:16
Like the things that you see like a swimming pool and just other things. So I just wanted to end with that is like, I think that's 01:11:18
it. I want the RDA board to consider awesome. Didn't I think go in 2011. 01:11:24
The what? The cap? 01:11:29
That $300 million cap? 01:11:31
I think that's 2011 when there was like. 01:11:33
200 residents here so. 01:11:36
I was before my time, so I wasn't able to be outraged at the time, but it is a good point. We need to. 01:11:38
Pay more attention. So thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I think one. Yeah, please go ahead. 01:11:43
Along with looking. 01:11:49
Backwards historically at what has happened. I think it's also important to say the work, I would say. 01:11:50
Just as important, the work that we're going to do is looking forward about setting up those policies. 01:11:57
Training whoever's going to be over the RDA and the Billings. 01:12:02
The steps they're going to do when a billing comes in, they're not just going to. 01:12:06
Prove it like. 01:12:09
What steps are they going to do? What are they going to be required to look at? 01:12:10
So that going forward. 01:12:15
You don't have to have these questions. 01:12:17
You have verified it. So thank you. Thank you. 01:12:19
Chris, sure. Appreciate your time. We will take your proposal into consideration and. 01:12:23
Be in contact with you we. 01:12:28
We really do appreciate that. 01:12:30
Just real quick on the proposal consideration. 01:12:32
Do we still have quotes from the other? I noticed the estimate of 40,000. 01:12:35
Falls into our necessity for three quotes. Do we know if any of the other quotes? 01:12:40
Were forensic auditors for this? 01:12:43
Do you guys maybe staff? 01:12:49
David Kyle, do you know? 01:12:51
You mean like did we get a second or third quote as opposed to? 01:12:55
Yeah, for the just because it's. 01:12:59
The estimates Forty $40,000 and. 01:13:00
And the same. Go ahead and the same. 01:13:03
Yeah, the scene was so yeah, I was. I was. 01:13:05
Around when we put out for a bit, so when we put it out for an RFP or RFP. 01:13:09
Last year we received one. 01:13:15
Bed who is? 01:13:17
Mr. Harding. 01:13:19
I'll not. So when we review that, we reviewed it to ensure that was fair and fair and reasonable pricing. 01:13:20
OK. Oh, OK. Got it. 01:13:26
Thank you, Sir. 01:13:29
All righty, we're going to jump into the next item on the agenda here. 01:13:30
We have the state auditor's office going to present. 01:13:34
Go over question and answer. 01:13:37
Like to invite. 01:13:38
Seth on up here and. 01:13:40
Introduce yourself if you could, and. 01:13:42
Thank you. Good having you here. 01:13:45
So my name is Seth Elvis and I'm the. 01:13:46
Manager for the Local Government Division of the State Auditor's Office and Kim Beck is here with me. 01:13:49
She works in the Special Projects division. 01:13:54
When we have. 01:13:57
They run the hotline. 01:13:59
For the state. 01:14:00
Where citizens can submit complaints if they have concerns or complaints. 01:14:02
That goes through them sometimes. If they're regarding a city, then there's some overlap between special projects and local 01:14:06
government because we work with mostly local governments. 01:14:10
And special projects come from that one, so. 01:14:14
In being asked to come and speak to you guys today, there were there were several questions that came both from. 01:14:19
From the special project side and the local government side. 01:14:25
That, uh. 01:14:28
I wanted to. 01:14:29
To go through and just. 01:14:30
Is cover some of them. 01:14:31
And then if you have any questions, you're welcome to. 01:14:33
To fire him away. 01:14:35
I reserve the right to say I'm not sure and we'll get back with you if that needs to happen though, so. 01:14:37
One of the one of the concerns that. 01:14:43
That came to our office. 01:14:45
With respect to Vineyard City. 01:14:47
Was regarding grandma. 01:14:49
The grammar process, how it happens? 01:14:52
Prior to my experience with. 01:14:55
With the state I was a grandma officer for a county. 01:14:57
And and there's. 01:15:00
There's different ways that different people can do it, and there are there's. 01:15:02
There's different grandma officers from different entities. 01:15:05
Will handle requests in different ways. 01:15:09
One of the key concerns should be consistency across how an entity. 01:15:11
Will handle those requests. 01:15:16
And and one of the things that should be consistent is the. 01:15:19
That governing body members do not need to make a grammar request to obtain information. 01:15:22
From the entity that they are. 01:15:27
Tasked with governance over. 01:15:29
So if I am a City Council member. 01:15:31
I should be able to go to. 01:15:33
My city. 01:15:35
Staff. 01:15:36
And request information. 01:15:37
They should provide that to me. 01:15:38
It's inherent in my job to. 01:15:40
To do that. 01:15:42
That that information has to be provided. 01:15:43
Another question that comes up. 01:15:47
Regularly with grandma and cities or counties. 01:15:49
Is. 01:15:52
How long do we need to keep these things? How long do we need to keep emails? How long do we need to keep? 01:15:53
Text messages on our phones. 01:15:58
If you're like me. 01:16:00
I was at a sporting event for one of my kids and my phone said I ran out of memory so I could had to stop videoing and. 01:16:02
And it was all the text messages they. 01:16:08
Had to purge those out. 01:16:10
The question there is really comes to. 01:16:13
The entity's retention schedule. That's one of those policies that you should have. 01:16:15
The state has a statewide retention schedule that you can adopt. 01:16:20
As far as how long you have to keep emails, different things like that. 01:16:24
And there's different types of documents that have different retention schedules. The city would adopt either the. 01:16:28
Standard retention schedule. 01:16:33
Or. 01:16:35
Or adopt their own. If you want to hold something longer, that's fine. 01:16:36
But then that needs to be communicated down through. 01:16:40
I don't like on the state level for us. 01:16:43
DTS at the state they. 01:16:47
They save those things whether I have deleted that e-mail off of my. 01:16:49
Inbox in my folder. 01:16:53
They're saved and backed up at the state level. 01:16:55
So even though I may have deleted it, it still exists. It still is a record and still could still be subject to grandma even 01:16:57
though I have deleted it. 01:17:01
Off of my individual machine. 01:17:05
Or my account. 01:17:07
So. 01:17:09
If you have a retention schedule, you need to communicate with your staff. 01:17:09
It and the different people that are receiving those emails. 01:17:12
On how long they should be kept. 01:17:16
Another question that comes with grandma is protected records. 01:17:20
Truly protected records. 01:17:26
They're protected to keep. 01:17:28
That individual or that situation safe. Sometimes the records are protected because of legal proceedings. 01:17:31
But the governing body mayor. City Council members. 01:17:36
Should have access to. 01:17:40
Those protected records. 01:17:42
I I can think of very limited times. 01:17:45
Maybe if there was a conflict of interest or someone. 01:17:47
Was was suing. 01:17:49
The city or involved in a lawsuit. 01:17:51
Or worked for a company that was involved in that. 01:17:53
They may need to recuse themselves and not have access to a specific record. 01:17:55
The General. 01:17:59
Rule should be. 01:18:00
Council members governing body members for any entity. 01:18:01
Should have access to those protected records. 01:18:04
If you speak to attorneys. 01:18:07
They will have. 01:18:09
They may have concerns over. 01:18:10
Attorney-client privilege. 01:18:13
And yes, the attorney-client privilege can be voided if. 01:18:14
If one council member were to. 01:18:18
To express that could it? 01:18:20
Now it's out in the open. 01:18:23
That discussion would be out in the open. 01:18:24
For the entire entity. 01:18:26
There can be a concern there. 01:18:28
But that is. 01:18:29
That would be handled separately. 01:18:31
As far as being able to access those records. 01:18:33
Access them, yes. 01:18:35
If they're. 01:18:36
If they're. 01:18:38
Should be. 01:18:39
Protected. 01:18:40
That should be disclosed to those council members and said, hey, this record contains this kind of information. 01:18:41
Don't. 01:18:47
Don't put it out. 01:18:48
For general consumption, because there's there's areas of concern. 01:18:49
But as far as keeping it from council members, that should be. 01:18:53
They should have access to that. 01:18:57
Principally, that's because the governing body are elected to govern. 01:19:00
Guide and direct. 01:19:03
The operations of. 01:19:05
Of the entity. 01:19:07
And any limitation in the scope of the information that they receive. 01:19:08
Impedes their. 01:19:12
Their execution of their elected duties. 01:19:13
So one of the concerns that came up over the course of the project that we worked on. 01:19:16
With the city last year. 01:19:22
Were the general Ledger records. 01:19:23
And this. 01:19:27
That actually kind of precedes my time with the state. There was a different. 01:19:29
Person from special projects that worked with Vineyard. 01:19:32
Prior to my coming. 01:19:35
And and working with them. 01:19:36
But. 01:19:38
In some of vineyards records there was a concern about. 01:19:40
Private information or sensitive information that was included in the city's. 01:19:44
Ledger. 01:19:47
For instance. 01:19:48
Examples would be like. 01:19:50
Late charges. 01:19:53
For library books. 01:19:54
So if little Johnny. 01:19:56
Was laid on his library book. Are we gonna say his name? He's a minor. We're gonna charge him. 01:19:58
5 bucks for his late fee or whatever. 01:20:03
Should that really be out there for people to? 01:20:05
To be able to criticize him or whatever. 01:20:08
Or not sufficient fees? 01:20:10
Charges. 01:20:12
For utility bills. 01:20:13
If I put out there. 01:20:14
A Parker's. 01:20:16
Put his name on the thing. Not sufficient funds that one. 01:20:20
If that's out there for people to see. 01:20:24
Would it be detrimental to his character to say his name on that line item? 01:20:26
There are. 01:20:31
Ways that you can adopt that? 01:20:32
All of the utility users have. 01:20:34
Account numbers attached to them too. It would be very easy for the city to make that change and say instead of putting the name 01:20:37
of the. 01:20:40
Of the client. 01:20:44
And not sufficient funds you could put. 01:20:45
Account number. 01:20:47
123-4567 not sufficient fund charge and put that on there. 01:20:48
That would keep those people's names out of the Ledger. 01:20:53
For public consumption. 01:20:57
And remedy that concern. 01:20:59
And that was a recommendation that was made by our office a couple of years ago. Hey, if you have those sort of things in there 01:21:00
when you put in that detailed line item. 01:21:04
Don't include the name. 01:21:08
Include the account number. 01:21:09
And then you don't have to worry about whether or not you need to redact items from that general Ledger. 01:21:10
That's a recommendation we would still hold to. 01:21:16
If you can use an account number. 01:21:20
Or whatever. 01:21:22
Use that. 01:21:23
Instead of it including people's names in those. 01:21:24
There were concerns over maybe you have a rec program. 01:21:27
And you hire. 01:21:30
Youth. 01:21:32
Lifeguards or whatever. 01:21:33
Should their information be out there? 01:21:35
In statute, any employee of a governmental entity, their compensation. 01:21:37
Is going to be posted out on the Transparent Utah website. 01:21:42
That is regardless of whether they are a minor or not. 01:21:45
If you have concerns about that, when you hire someone that is underage, you should also get the signature of their parent that 01:21:49
says, hey, we're going to pay them. 01:21:53
And we're going to make their compensation visible to the public. 01:21:57
And if they have a problem with that. 01:22:00
They should know up front. 01:22:02
And not sign up for it. You won't be able to hire that individual and. 01:22:04
And you'll move on and find somebody else who's willing to have it out there. 01:22:07
When we're dealing with compensation information. 01:22:12
What we consider private. 01:22:15
There's really only one or two cases. 01:22:17
Domestic abuse cases, if they have documented thing from a court that says they're subject to metastatic abuse, we don't publish 01:22:20
those. And undercover policemen, we don't publish their names and their compensation information. 01:22:25
Because it could. 01:22:31
Cause problems. 01:22:32
With. 01:22:34
With the exception of those two cases. 01:22:36
Pretty much everybody else. Compensation information can and should be out on the public. 01:22:38
The transparency website. 01:22:43
Um. 01:22:46
Excuse me, I have. 01:22:51
A little bit of cold, obviously, but. 01:22:52
I'll try not to cough into the microphone. You're fine. 01:22:54
Wanted to walk? 01:22:58
Are actual findings that we we provided to the city. 01:22:59
In looking through those things, we were asked to look at the RDA. 01:23:03
When you're dealing with the RDA, I would. 01:23:06
Would echo. 01:23:08
When you look at Vineyard. 01:23:10
Versus their RDA, the RDA is is bigger and what I would consider higher risk because of the dollars flowing through that. 01:23:12
And, and I applaud the efforts. I've never sat in a in a council meeting that they dedicate an entire hour to. 01:23:19
Audits and controls I'm. 01:23:25
I'm happy and impressed that you're taking the time to do that. 01:23:26
Um. 01:23:30
The first finding that we had when we received complaints was. 01:23:33
Information not included on the Transparent Utah website. 01:23:38
A lot of that information were. 01:23:43
Distributions to. 01:23:45
Developers in the RDA. 01:23:47
Which does not have good optics for the city. 01:23:50
That those would be the. 01:23:54
The specific transactions that were omitted. 01:23:56
We worked with staff. 01:23:59
We didn't find that. 01:24:01
That there was a specific reason that there was intention to leave those out. 01:24:03
However, it still doesn't look good for the city to exclude those kind of payments. 01:24:07
At the end of the year. 01:24:12
We worked with staff. 01:24:15
We made sure that they were aware, hey, these things are missing. 01:24:16
They were prompt. 01:24:19
They made those changes. It's uploaded and available on the public notice website. 01:24:20
On the. 01:24:25
Transparent Utah website. 01:24:26
Today. 01:24:28
The other. 01:24:30
The other. 01:24:30
Finding that we had was. 01:24:31
Was other taxing entity involvement in the RDA? 01:24:33
This is one that was kind of interesting because the city's response at the time came back and said. 01:24:37
But we didn't do it wrong. 01:24:42
And we had to put her kind of a rebuttal on that one saying. 01:24:44
When you created the RDA. 01:24:48
The governing document that was. 01:24:50
Was put in place by, the city said. 01:24:52
You would have an annual meeting of the taxing entities. 01:24:54
There was a statutory change later that said you don't have to do that anymore for this. 01:24:59
Specific RDA type. 01:25:03
Which is fine. 01:25:06
But the. 01:25:07
The RDA was created with the governing document. If they wanted to move to not having that annual meeting, they should have had an 01:25:08
had a meeting and said statute changed. Now we're going to stop having this meeting. 01:25:13
That didn't happen, so our recommendation was resume those annual meetings until the RDA board. 01:25:20
Votes to. 01:25:26
To go with the new statute and stop having those. So we listed that as a finding. The criteria for that finding was. 01:25:27
You didn't follow your own. 01:25:34
Policy. You said you were going to have an annual meeting. 01:25:36
And you stopped doing that without changing that resolution. 01:25:39
So the other one. 01:25:42
Deals with. 01:25:45
Gatsby 77, which requires. 01:25:46
Documentation for. 01:25:49
Tax abatement disclosures. 01:25:51
What happens when you have an RDA and you give money back to a developer? 01:25:53
For a specific reason. 01:25:56
Those are considered. 01:25:58
Whether they are actually pay the tax and then they receive it back on the back end, or whether the tax was actually. 01:26:00
Waived. It doesn't matter the. 01:26:06
It's it's substance over form in the end. 01:26:09
They received money back from a tax. 01:26:12
Tax Fund. 01:26:15
Those disclosures have to be made and they weren't included in the annual financial statements. 01:26:18
So that was another. 01:26:23
Another finding we have. 01:26:24
We also put in a couple of. 01:26:25
Of observations is. 01:26:27
As he mentioned earlier. 01:26:29
We had observations which. 01:26:31
Were not statutory non compliance. 01:26:32
They were observations. The first observation dealt with cities. 01:26:34
Purchasing policy. 01:26:38
At the time, the city's purchasing policy. 01:26:39
Purchases were able to be made by the mayor's office or. 01:26:43
Or heads without council approval. 01:26:45
Up to $125,000. 01:26:48
Which we are office felt was excessive. 01:26:50
The state auditor. 01:26:53
Is a is a constitutional office. 01:26:54
And her. 01:26:56
Her statutory authority is way less than $125,000 so. 01:26:58
And so. 01:27:04
Statute allows you to set your own thresholds. 01:27:08
But uh. 01:27:11
We felt like that was was higher than what it should be. So as you're reviewing your policies. 01:27:11
You can set thresholds for different things. 01:27:18
For instance is you're having that conversation. 01:27:21
Travel, different things like that, you can make your purchasing policy be as detailed as you'd want. So if you want to say hey. 01:27:24
For travel purchases or food purchases, we want a lower threshold. It's totally fine if you want other type of things like you 01:27:30
have a road department and they're. 01:27:35
Maybe they need a higher threshold because they couldn't buy new tires for a truck. 01:27:40
Without. 01:27:43
Crossing $1000 Whatever you can set. 01:27:44
Different thresholds for different departments. 01:27:46
And for different needs. 01:27:49
And then the last one, the last observation was the concerns over Alpine School District. 01:27:51
With the disillusion of. 01:27:56
Of Alpine school districts, splitting into three different school districts. 01:27:57
And how the? 01:28:00
How the situation with the RDA will fit into those? 01:28:02
We felt like. 01:28:06
That is something the city should look into as an RDA board to make sure that there's. 01:28:07
Those agreements are all in place. 01:28:11
And people are notified because it will. 01:28:15
Affect the school district that. 01:28:17
That resumes operations of educating youth. 01:28:19
In this geographic area that includes Vineyard. 01:28:23
They are going to have some unique circumstances. 01:28:26
That those other ones will not have. 01:28:29
And like again, we are not attorneys. 01:28:32
But we can recognize hey, this could be a pitfall. 01:28:35
You should seek legal counsel to make sure that happens. 01:28:38
So those those were our. 01:28:42
From that. 01:28:45
I I know that there was there was at least some concern from. 01:28:48
From citizens on the. 01:28:51
Their response to those audit findings? 01:28:53
Particularly in that case. 01:28:56
How? How should a city? 01:28:58
When you receive findings from. 01:28:59
Either an outside firm or. 01:29:01
Or from your external auditor from our office. 01:29:03
The typical response that should happen when you receive those findings back is you'll have either the entire council. 01:29:05
Or. 01:29:12
A subset of that council, if you have an audit committee that's that's going to receive those separately. 01:29:13
You should receive those. You should. 01:29:17
All of you be able to discuss them. 01:29:19
Understand what the recommendations are. 01:29:21
Come up with your. 01:29:24
Plan for how you're going to do that going forward. 01:29:25
And then you can direct staff or the mayor, whoever, to write the response and make sure that it's it's in line with. 01:29:28
What the governing body has decided. 01:29:34
That's how auto responses should come because. 01:29:38
Those tasked with governance, which is the entire council. 01:29:41
Should be involved with the response for those. 01:29:44
And with that. 01:29:48
I don't want to. 01:29:50
Keep everybody here too late. We'll take any questions you have. The first question I have for you just going off of your last 01:29:51
comment regarding the the response. 01:29:55
Is it the opinion of your office that our response? 01:29:59
Has been sufficient. Would you recommend that we re. 01:30:03
Submit it I. 01:30:06
Or both. Walk us through. 01:30:08
Because that is one concern that I had is I saw the response, there was a. 01:30:11
Some chirpiness. 01:30:16
From the cities side and I just want to make sure that. 01:30:18
Moving forward. 01:30:21
That we. 01:30:22
Are in a good. 01:30:23
Standing in a relationship with the auditors. 01:30:24
Well, is our intent. 01:30:26
Our our office. 01:30:28
Typically you will see. 01:30:30
Findings. 01:30:32
Recommendations the city's response on their planned path forward and that's the end of the report. If you look at that report 01:30:33
from our office, it has. 01:30:36
Findings. Recommendations from the auditor's office. 01:30:40
The city's response to those? 01:30:43
Those recommendations and then there's concluding remarks from our office. The reason why we put concluding remarks were to 01:30:45
clarify. 01:30:49
Some of the response back. 01:30:52
And or perceived kickback from the city saying. 01:30:54
We didn't do this wrong. 01:30:57
And our, our. 01:30:59
Clarification on that was. 01:31:01
We're not saying you didn't follow statute. We're saying you set the resolution to say what you were going to do and then you 01:31:02
didn't do it. 01:31:05
Which is typically what we'd have if an entity didn't follow their own purchasing policy. Who would come in and say? 01:31:09
You have a purchasing policy. You didn't follow it. 01:31:14
You get to set your rules. 01:31:17
But then we expect you to follow those rules, so. 01:31:18
As far as office is concerned. 01:31:21
That project is completed. 01:31:23
We know that there is a transition period, we know that. 01:31:26
That we have new council people in there and we can see that the city is taking steps to try to put different things in place. 01:31:29
So short of us receiving additional complaints through the hotline. 01:31:35
Or makers of like right now. 01:31:41
This the state auditor's office is waiting so that the city can implement those changes that they. 01:31:42
Have working on that. 01:31:47
Not saying we won't come back and look at things again in the future, sure, because we can. And if if we received a. 01:31:49
Vetted complaint. 01:31:54
We would. 01:31:56
But. 01:31:58
Right now. 01:31:59
The city is very much in a transitionary. 01:32:00
Period. And we're going to let you do your job. 01:32:02
Of making those changes as you as the. 01:32:05
The Council sees fit. 01:32:08
And our office can be. 01:32:10
Can be a resource for that. We have a local government Resource Center. 01:32:12
We have some policies and things that are out there for people to be able to use and access. 01:32:15
They will not get you all the way there. 01:32:20
They're meant as templates to help. 01:32:22
Get you 80% of the way and then you'll need to tailor it to your own needs. 01:32:24
But we do have some resources out there. 01:32:28
And our team is there. So if you have questions or concerns. 01:32:30
We can provide training for staff and things as well so. 01:32:34
We do want to be a resource for you as you're going forward, but. 01:32:37
But right now I don't have a planned project to come. 01:32:40
Do another audit, OK. 01:32:43
Awesome. Thank you. Open up the comments and questions from the. 01:32:45
The Council. 01:32:50
Have a very maybe superficial question. 01:32:50
Out of everything you presented. 01:32:54
You mentioned the retention schedule and to my knowledge I don't. 01:32:56
No, I think I've seen one that Vineyard has published. We went through this today. Stephanie sent it. We met with Chris Bramwell. 01:33:00
From the state that helped us look at it. 01:33:09
As we fill the positions within the city, Stephanie is going to work with. 01:33:13
Those that are involved. 01:33:18
In that, and we're going to bring that back to the Council. 01:33:20
OK. You mentioned that the state of Utah has one already, that the city could. 01:33:24
Choose to adopt or fall in on. Do you know what that is off the top of your head? 01:33:29
No, because it'll go through different types of documents and how long you need to hold them. So for instance, invoices have a 01:33:33
certain retention schedule, emails will have a different thing, different things. So they'll they'll go through different document 01:33:36
types. 01:33:40
And what they are, some are permanent. 01:33:44
Minutes from a council meeting or permanent retention schedule. You have to keep them forever, but. 01:33:46
But they will go through those different document types. 01:33:50
From. 01:33:55
I guess. 01:33:58
Once a policy is. 01:33:59
Adopted, like best practice would be, The City Council discusses the policy. 01:34:01
Votes to implement. 01:34:06
Directs the staff. 01:34:08
What's the you mentioned the auditors. We get to set the policy. The auditors job is to. 01:34:09
Make sure that we're beheld to it to our own rules like you you said. 01:34:15
What's the expectation for? 01:34:19
Governing body in that process versus city staff and how does the auditor actually? 01:34:21
Work into that. 01:34:27
Well, the City Council should set the policy. 01:34:29
The mayor should implement the policy. 01:34:33
Through his through the staff. 01:34:36
And then? 01:34:39
Then you'd need. 01:34:40
Part of how you keep your finger on the pulse, so that is through your annual audits, through those different things. When you 01:34:41
have your external auditors come in for the annual audit, they should have an entrance conference with you. 01:34:46
Where the council members or mayor. 01:34:51
Can can express, hey, we have a concern in this area. 01:34:54
And those auditors? 01:34:57
Have to are required by standards to take risk based approach. If you have identified a risk, they should take it. 01:34:58
A closer look at that area. 01:35:05
To provide assurance that that risk has been mitigated. 01:35:07
So you can provide that and you have a little bit of. 01:35:10
Of direction in that one if you wanted them to take a super deep dive into a specific area. 01:35:13
Obviously they'll probably come back and say this was outside of the scope of the original audit. It's going to cost this much 01:35:18
more. 01:35:21
And you have to manage that. 01:35:23
The Council talked a little bit tonight about. 01:35:26
Costs of different things. 01:35:28
City Council. 01:35:31
Governing bodies and City Council members especially. 01:35:32
Have a. 01:35:35
Kind of a tight line to walk. 01:35:37
You're tasked with. 01:35:39
Putting the controls in place to safeguard the public assets. 01:35:41
You also. 01:35:46
Have to be responsible about what you do there. The lock that you put in place shouldn't cost more than what you're trying to 01:35:47
safeguard. 01:35:50
So there's an area of judgment there. 01:35:55
And the public has voted you in place to make that judgment call, so. 01:35:59
It's not, Not necessarily. 01:36:04
Hey, this is I can't give you a black and white. This is what you should and shouldn't do. 01:36:07
Should we expand those procedures or not? 01:36:10
You need to look at that and say, OK, where are we having risks? 01:36:13
We think we want to take your deeper dive. 01:36:16
Great. 01:36:18
Do it. 01:36:19
And then the public will be able to say. 01:36:20
We're proud of you. We'll vote you in for another term or. 01:36:23
Or hey, we want to go a different direction. 01:36:26
That's that's one of the things about the governments that we work with is. 01:36:28
When a community feels like they want a change of direction, they will vote in different people that. 01:36:33
That represent that. 01:36:37
Desire so change, yeah. 01:36:39
Anybody else? I Yeah. 01:36:42
You covered a lot. 01:36:48
And I just want to say. 01:36:49
Thank you to. 01:36:52
To your office and fielding. Over the past two years, I've made countless calls. 01:36:54
I don't know, Seth. 01:36:59
Personally or anything? 01:37:00
But in every single time. 01:37:01
Tina, I think I spoke with her once on the phone, but like. 01:37:03
Having you know. 01:37:07
You guys as a guidance to. 01:37:08
Turn to and know what is state law and I know. 01:37:11
You went through a lot of things. 01:37:14
Just barely and cleared it up and coming here and just. 01:37:16
Verifying everything. 01:37:20
Seth told me all of these things over the course of two years. 01:37:23
And him coming in just. 01:37:27
Repeating what he told us. 01:37:30
I know there were. 01:37:33
A lot of public. 01:37:34
Comments about it not being this way, but tonight it verifies that. 01:37:35
The Council that we got. 01:37:39
In different phone calls verified it so if any citizens have any. 01:37:42
Where we did this today to just say, hey, he's told us and. 01:37:46
I'm really grateful for David Larae being in many phone calls. 01:37:49
You know our previous legal counsel. 01:37:55
Or leadership. 01:37:57
It didn't come out that way over 2 years. 01:38:00
You know, and then without rehashing the past because we are focused. 01:38:03
I'm grateful that when character was. 01:38:08
Questioned that. 01:38:11
Your office continued to stand forth on the policy. 01:38:12
And and support Vineyard City. 01:38:16
In in, you're right, elections have consequences, but. 01:38:20
But we could be folly, and I'm grateful that citizens can call your office and report us. I think citizens should continue. 01:38:25
To call and verify what what we're doing because. 01:38:32
The citizens of Vineyard. This is a victory for the citizens of Vineyard that did. 01:38:36
Make those calls. 01:38:41
There's two things that you did say though. 01:38:43
That are very. 01:38:46
You have a pendulum swinging and one of the things that I learned in your calls. 01:38:48
There's two requirements, one of the notifications of legislation when an RDA changes or extends. 01:38:52
Without I mean. 01:39:01
Citizens or Rdas can go and get into the lobbying world of lobbying to remove notification, but one really obscure. 01:39:02
Legislative pass that. 01:39:10
Was removed from the largest RDA in the state. Was the requirement. 01:39:12
That when there was a change to the RDA that. 01:39:17
Taxpayers within Alpine School District and the board of Alpine School District would not be notified. 01:39:20
We are the. 01:39:26
To my knowledge, we're because of that. 01:39:27
I'm going to call it a backdoor legislation because it's the only RDA that had and. 01:39:30
Even at that time, it wasn't publicly discussed within this RDA board. 01:39:34
That. 01:39:39
That put. 01:39:40
Are I mean, if you could imagine the millions of dollars? 01:39:41
Alpine School District and their 60% or whatever their money would be able to come in and help. 01:39:45
Help us and at least once a year. 01:39:50
Or at least get that and say. 01:39:54
Can we spend more money? And then the second thing is, is the annual meeting? 01:39:57
Stopped. Carson brought that up too. 01:40:01
By not sinking and meeting. 01:40:05
Things could have been found. 01:40:07
But because that was stopped. 01:40:09
And we're like, we're not going to bring in the county, We're not going to bring in the school district. 01:40:11
I think it's really important that the RDA, we have the ability right now saying, hey. 01:40:16
Restart those meetings. 01:40:20
I think that is very important. I think that the more eyes, the more transparency, at least annually, coming in with the. 01:40:23
10s of millions of dollars. 01:40:29
What I don't like is that. 01:40:31
How that was changed so that? 01:40:33
That safe those two safeguards were removed. 01:40:36
Safeguards are there for for a reason. 01:40:39
And so. 01:40:41
Though legally you can. 01:40:42
Go to the legislature and change the law to remove all of those. 01:40:44
It it perks me up and gets me scared. So I think we need to be thinking about that, sure. 01:40:48
So that brings up my question. 01:40:53
Sorry, go ahead, please. 01:40:55
So you mentioned that the. 01:40:56
It was that the TEC, the Tax Entity Committee. 01:40:58
Stopped meeting and the. 01:41:03
The bylaws or the. 01:41:05
Rules require them to meet annually. 01:41:07
And if they wanted to change that, they needed to meet and say, OK, in observance of this new legislation, we'll stop meeting. 01:41:10
So. 01:41:17
If we want to restart that. 01:41:18
How? Whose responsibility is it? Is it the board's responsibility to? 01:41:20
To call a tax entity committee, because my understanding was that that. 01:41:24
That entity met and authorized the board to go forward. 01:41:29
And so I'm not sure how that you know. 01:41:33
You know who does what and so forth. 01:41:35
So. 01:41:39
Yes, the. 01:41:41
The creating resolution for. 01:41:42
For the RDA. 01:41:44
Included the existence of a tax. 01:41:46
Tax Entity committee. 01:41:49
Tech committee is what they call them. 01:41:50
And in that. 01:41:53
Authorizing resolution, it said that they would meet annually. 01:41:54
So to to start that up again. 01:41:58
Really. If that resolution hasn't been superseded with another resolution that says you shouldn't. 01:42:03
Then you you. 01:42:08
Could have and should have been having an annual meeting every year. 01:42:09
To get that going again. 01:42:13
You would reach out to. 01:42:15
The RDA board, which is the City Council just. 01:42:17
Wearing a different hat. 01:42:20
Would say, hey, we're going to have a taxing entity committee meeting. 01:42:21
Do they need to actually take an action? 01:42:26
No, the action was taken already. 01:42:28
And so it would be a. 01:42:31
Purely informational meeting. 01:42:32
But. 01:42:34
You would need to contact each of the participating entities. 01:42:35
Alpine School District, Utah County. 01:42:39
Vineyard City. 01:42:41
All of the different entities that were. 01:42:43
Would be participating or are participating in that? 01:42:44
Contributing tax increment to that and ask those entities who. 01:42:48
Their representative would be which overtime they may or may not. 01:42:51
Even know that they should have a representative that. 01:42:56
And they can designate someone to come. 01:42:58
And have that meeting so that you can meet and. 01:43:01
And be able to provide that information to them. 01:43:04
So in summary, it's incumbent upon our RDA board to initiate contact with each of the entities and call that meeting and bring it 01:43:07
together as opposed to have each of the entities get together and say, OK, we need to meet again. 01:43:14
And then on board, we're going to. 01:43:21
You know we're gonna meet. 01:43:24
You guys might want to come. 01:43:25
When when a city creates an. 01:43:26
You are the. 01:43:29
The host or parent organization that created the RDA. 01:43:30
Therefore, the city's resources, staff, whatever, would be the ones that would be expected to. 01:43:35
To make sure that happens, send out the emails, set the dates at the time, make sure everybody's invited, and make it happen. 01:43:40
Thank you for clarity. Appreciate it very much. I have one more question about your finding I should have. 01:43:47
OK, Alpine School District is. 01:43:52
Dead in what, 6 months or how? I don't know however. 01:43:53
So is it upon us to? 01:43:56
You know, obviously. 01:43:59
The new entity you've got to contact Timpanogos. 01:44:00
And make them aware and bring them. 01:44:03
Because you did not have a finding whether they have to continue. 01:44:06
It's that we have to discuss with them. Are they going to continue in the RDA at that level? 01:44:10
Or our attorneys need to get together and. 01:44:15
And hash that out right like that was your advisement was like, we're not gonna. 01:44:18
We're not going to take it. 01:44:23
Could you describe that so? 01:44:24
Again, our office is not. 01:44:27
I'm not an attorney, right? I'm a pretty good accountant, but not a good attorney, so. 01:44:28
Yes, we recommend that you you get with those. 01:44:33
With that entity. 01:44:36
And make sure that it is. 01:44:37
We did. 01:44:38
Consult with some things and and. 01:44:39
Reading through the. 01:44:41
The statute it there are. 01:44:42
There's parts in the statute that would would lean towards yes, they're going to pick up the obligation that Alpine School 01:44:44
District had. 01:44:47
Us not being attorneys and. 01:44:51
And there's. 01:44:53
Concerns from one side, well will they? And the other side is saying, well it says here that they will. 01:44:54
Which ones right? 01:44:59
I think it would. 01:45:01
It wouldn't be wise to have the city. 01:45:02
Talk to their attorney. Make sure that. 01:45:05
That come up with a legal opinion on what's going to happen there, how it should happen. 01:45:06
And then? 01:45:11
That may be a good item to. 01:45:13
To discuss at that tech committee saying, hey, we know some of the players are changing. 01:45:14
This is how. 01:45:18
What our legal counsel has said is how it will go forward. 01:45:20
Make sure that everybody's on the same page. 01:45:24
Because. 01:45:26
Because whether or not. 01:45:28
The school district receives those money because they come straight to the RDA. 01:45:29
The school district has to recognize. 01:45:32
That revenue as tax revenue. 01:45:35
At the school district level. 01:45:37
And then? 01:45:39
An intergovernmental transfer to the RDA because it's their tax levy. 01:45:40
They have to own the tax levy. 01:45:44
So because it's their tax revenue, they have to recognize it first. 01:45:46
And then put her on their books as a transfer to another governmental entity, which is the RDA. 01:45:50
So. 01:45:54
Even though the money goes straight to the RDA. 01:45:55
They are having a transaction on their books that they have to recognize for that. 01:45:57
And it's. 01:46:01
It behooves the RDA board to make sure that they have that information available to them. 01:46:02
Thank you for that. I just. 01:46:07
Just as an FYI, I have been in contact with the Timpanogos, the new Timpanogos school board. 01:46:10
They recently hired a new Superintendent and they. 01:46:15
Are it's been expressing me they do have concern with how the RDA has been run? 01:46:19
And so we're gonna. 01:46:23
So now that the Superintendent is. 01:46:24
Up and going. We're going to. 01:46:27
Meet with them and kind of make sure that we all feel good about. 01:46:28
How it's doing? 01:46:31
And going. 01:46:33
Just to have that again, that taxing the entity and that oversight. 01:46:34
That was our observation and recommendation is. 01:46:38
Have the conversations get everybody on the same page. Yeah, because. 01:46:40
Where our office would not like to be is. 01:46:45
In a year from now? 01:46:49
Have everything run off the rails and. 01:46:51
And have it being battled out in court. 01:46:53
Yeah, it'd be a waste of public resources for sure. 01:46:55
So very good. 01:46:57
Any other questions for Seth or his office? 01:46:59
I have some. 01:47:04
Yeah, go ahead. 01:47:05
First of all, thank you for. 01:47:06
For your audit, I really appreciate. 01:47:08
The context of. 01:47:11
Of the audit, the professionalism. 01:47:12
Exhibited by your office and providing that the only one question I had about the audit itself. 01:47:15
Was there's a code reference Utah code 173-12? 01:47:21
I couldn't find that. 01:47:26
I was just wondering. 01:47:27
What that code reference was? 01:47:28
It's in the first finding. 01:47:31
17C. 01:47:32
As it potentially referencing. 01:47:33
17312. 01:47:36
And I was wondering if it was potentially referencing a historical code or. 01:47:38
A different one, but it's in finding one the end of the criteria paragraph. 01:47:43
I'd have to pull up the code to make sure that typo. 01:47:47
But I can get back with you on that. That's fine real quick. 01:47:50
Yeah, because I know your office has been contacted 3 or 4 times about this. 01:47:53
The social media. 01:47:57
Council members contact writing and social media. 01:48:00
To the largest Facebook group in the city and. 01:48:03
Citizen asked us a question or. 01:48:06
Were could you talk about that policy of? 01:48:08
If you know is that. 01:48:11
Private meeting or a council like. 01:48:14
So we've got a Facebook of about 6000 people in it. 01:48:17
We comment in there. 01:48:21
So if. 01:48:22
If a. 01:48:23
If a council member is expressing their political views on a. 01:48:24
Private platform or? 01:48:28
Public platform, Facebook, whatever. 01:48:29
That is not. 01:48:32
Stop prohibited. 01:48:35
By code now if. 01:48:36
If. 01:48:37
A couple of you were going back and forth and saying hey. 01:48:39
What about agenda item number 2 tomorrow? Are you going to vote yes? 01:48:43
You you really should. 01:48:46
That would be deliberating a public. 01:48:48
Public policy decision. 01:48:50
On an electronic platform outside of a meeting. 01:48:52
And that would not. 01:48:55
Be wise, I would not do that. 01:48:56
But if you. 01:48:59
You know, hey, I really like this this thing. 01:49:01
Everybody has their own public views and you're. 01:49:04
You're allowed to. 01:49:07
Express those views. 01:49:08
I would just. 01:49:10
I would avoid. 01:49:11
The deliberation back and forth. 01:49:12
Between 2:00. 01:49:15
You know, council members going back and forth. 01:49:16
On those things. 01:49:19
Now 1 can express their views, another one can express their views. 01:49:20
And and you can you can have multiple views expressed on those platforms, but. 01:49:25
Going back and either deliberating or talking about a decision that the board is going to be made should happen in this in this 01:49:29
meeting. 01:49:33
Another platform. 01:49:36
Thank you. 01:49:38
Thank you. 01:49:39
Anybody else? 01:49:41
Oh, can I? Can I keep going? That was. 01:49:42
Yeah, that was just the first question I had. So sorry. 01:49:44
The remainder, just for the public's benefit, could you? 01:49:48
Kind of describe the. 01:49:50
Transparency Utah website and the process of. 01:49:52
Reporting our finances versus the recommendation of. 01:49:55
The year end. 01:49:59
Then we go back and clear in the urine. Can you just explain that process? So statute requires governmental entities to upload 01:50:01
their transactional information to the. 01:50:05
Transparent Utah website. 01:50:09
And that happens quarterly. 01:50:12
So. 01:50:14
Quarter one, you have 30 days after you end of your quarter to get those transactions uploaded. 01:50:15
We do know that. 01:50:20
Entities may make changes. 01:50:21
Maybe you catch something in September or October. 01:50:23
That was a transaction that happened in July which we your first quarter because cities of fiscal year. 01:50:26
And they make that change. 01:50:32
Or you make an adjustment. 01:50:33
A lot of the times you'll see those with adjusting journal entries if the external CPA firm notes that there were transactions 01:50:35
that were coded wrong in your accounting system. 01:50:39
They will propose audit adjustments which are posted. 01:50:44
Sometimes up to six months after the year end because the the entity has 180 days after the year end. 01:50:48
To get their audit. 01:50:54
Completed. 01:50:55
And submitted. 01:50:55
And the, the recommendation there and what we, we've made that recommendation not only to the new city, but to all governmental 01:50:57
entities is. 01:51:01
You make that. 01:51:06
That, uh. 01:51:07
Submission to the Transparent Utah. 01:51:08
Website. 01:51:10
Every quarter. 01:51:11
As required by statute. 01:51:13
Then you will after your audit is complete, you will make another one where you will replace those 4 quarterly files with one 01:51:14
annual file that will contain any audit adjustments or anything else that happened during the year. 01:51:20
After what was originally submitted. 01:51:25
So that. 01:51:27
There's a full and accurate. 01:51:28
Record. 01:51:30
Available for the public. 01:51:31
And that that. 01:51:34
Is one of the biggest things that was missing when we when we submitted before Vineyard had not made an end of year adjustments. 01:51:36
So any of those end of year adjustments. 01:51:39
Didn't make it into the the submission of the Transparent Utah website. 01:51:44
Can I ask a follow up? 01:51:48
Yeah, I need one more to go. 01:51:49
So earlier you mentioned. 01:51:51
That the city should. 01:51:53
Have the general Ledger in such a format manner that it could be provided to a resident at any given time. 01:51:55
That's different than the requirements to. 01:52:02
Upload to Transparent Utah. 01:52:06
Quarterly. 01:52:08
Does the Ledger when requested only need to provide what's on transparent UT or would it? 01:52:09
Also just. 01:52:14
Be the current running Ledger for the months not reported yet. 01:52:15
Well, if a citizen wanted to be on top of it and ask for that. 01:52:20
Prior to the end of the quarter, like hey, we're only one month into quarter one, but I'm interested in what happened that one. 01:52:23
A citizen could request hey I want. 01:52:29
The first months. 01:52:31
And that should be able to be provided by the city, correct? 01:52:33
Correct. 01:52:35
Thank you. 01:52:36
It's a public document. 01:52:37
Sure, I. 01:52:38
I expect, Mayor, that that. 01:52:40
Be applied absolutely definitely lined there. 01:52:42
With that. 01:52:46
Ezra, did you have any more questions you wanted to? Yeah. 01:52:48
Go ahead. 01:52:50
How often do agencies usually have differences between the quarter? 01:52:52
And reports and the. 01:52:57
Annual audited reports. 01:52:59
Regularly. 01:53:03
OK, so. 01:53:04
Most governmental entities in the state don't do a complete close out of their books every month. 01:53:06
Because it's not worth the. 01:53:12
The time and effort would be so for instance. 01:53:15
They don't go every month and say. 01:53:17
What are all of our receivables? 01:53:19
Typically, that's only. 01:53:21
Really important to those entities. 01:53:23
At their year end mark. 01:53:24
Because they want to make sure that they get in the correct reporting year. 01:53:26
If it if it falls between. 01:53:30
You know, month 3 or month 4. 01:53:33
Your accounting staff isn't going to take the time to. 01:53:35
To make sure that those are. 01:53:38
Are perfect or do accruals for receivables or payables at that point in time they're just going to be processing those payables at 01:53:39
year end. They're going to make sure that they fit into the right. 01:53:44
Into the right ear. 01:53:48
So as they go through that process, those kind of adjustments. 01:53:51
Most entities will have some adjustments. 01:53:57
That is something that you can watch. I mean, it's something that. 01:54:00
That when the audit happens. 01:54:02
You can look at that and say, hey, did we have significant audit adjustments because those external auditors will provide those 01:54:04
adjustments to you. 01:54:07
And if you look at that and say whoa. 01:54:11
Why did we have 4 pages of adjustments? 01:54:13
Well, maybe they're small adjustments for payables and stuff like that. 01:54:16
Which would be reasonable. 01:54:20
But if they were large adjustments for other things that were just missed. 01:54:22
Then you could have that conversation, say. 01:54:26
Are we missing these things? Why? 01:54:28
And let's do better next year so we don't miss those. Maybe we need to change our. 01:54:31
Procedures so that we catch those. 01:54:34
And that's one of the things that you can watch and keep your finger on the pulse of it so that. 01:54:37
You do, but most entities do have adjustments, end of year adjustments that need to be. 01:54:41
Included in their financial uploads. 01:54:45
Great. Thank you. 01:54:48
Those urine reports are those reported to the state separately from. 01:54:51
Transparency Utah website as well. 01:54:54
The the financial report, the annual financial audited financial report. Yes, they're available. They can be accessed on 01:54:57
auditor.utah.gov. So transparent.utah.gov has the transactional information. 01:55:02
Auditor, Utah Gov has an option to search auto reports. 01:55:08
And the public can put in. 01:55:11
Any entity name? 01:55:13
And if I pull up those reports for any entity for the different years. 01:55:15
I think we have. 01:55:18
Everything on them out. 01:55:20
At least 10 years back right now that they can look at. 01:55:21
We have other ones that go back further but. 01:55:24
We archive them because mostly people want. 01:55:26
The most recent decade worth of reports. 01:55:28
Thanks. And just two last questions. To your knowledge, was there any discrepancy between? 01:55:31
The annual financial reports that were uploaded to the auditor website versus the ones that later got re uploaded. 01:55:36
Into transparency Utah. 01:55:42
So that as far as. 01:55:45
We looked at the transparent Utah uploads. 01:55:48
I'm not aware of. 01:55:51
An ACT for an annual comprehensive financial report. 01:55:53
Different ones not being uploaded to to the state. 01:55:57
I'd have to look back at the. 01:56:00
Those being submitted if there were changes in that one but. 01:56:03
I think the the. 01:56:06
Because of the time lapse. 01:56:07
And they weren't counted in one quarter, then they weren't followed in the previous quarter. So then there were those gaps. 01:56:09
And it was like, what, 35 million that wasn't be. 01:56:16
Because of the different time lapse. 01:56:19
Or whatever, but but that that was on the Transparent Utah website and he's asking about changes to the annual comprehensive 01:56:20
financial report, which are which are different. 01:56:24
Different documents, so the ones all the transactions and there were missing transactions. 01:56:29
But I'm not aware of. 01:56:33
Of changes to the financial report. 01:56:35
And you mentioned the 35 million? 01:56:38
Sorry so. 01:56:41
One last question after this one. 01:56:42
A lot of the discussion that happened in the aftermath of this audit, and I know this was nothing. 01:56:47
On your audit, to your knowledge was there. 01:56:51
35 million in developer payments that were. 01:56:54
Unreported between. 01:56:58
2022 and 2025 is. 01:57:00
Some may have mentioned in the public. 01:57:02
Yes, those those payments. 01:57:05
Majority of them going out to developer. 01:57:07
Payments were not uploaded to the Transparent Utah website. 01:57:10
And then we went through. 01:57:14
We received the. 01:57:15
The Ledger from the. 01:57:17
From the city. 01:57:19
And we could then compare. 01:57:20
A direct download from the Ledger from the city. 01:57:22
And we compared that to the transparent Utah. 01:57:24
Upload umm. 01:57:26
Afterwards to vet that. 01:57:27
That everything that was in the city's records. 01:57:28
Also appeared on the Transparent Utah website. 01:57:31
But they were. 01:57:33
Originally missed. 01:57:34
And those were $35 million of direct payments to developers. 01:57:36
Over those four years, that's your professional opinion. 01:57:40
I don't remember that. 01:57:44
I would have to go back to be able to answer that question. I have to go back and look at the exact payments because I don't 01:57:45
remember who they were all to, but there were a number of them that were. 01:57:49
To developers. 01:57:53
Because they were entered in after the year end after the submission of. 01:57:55
For that last quarter of the year, so. 01:57:59
The city had until. 01:58:02
The end of July to upload their things. 01:58:04
And those those. 01:58:07
Adjustments were uploaded into the city, so they they submitted it in July. 01:58:08
And end of July. 01:58:13
And then later on in September, October's, they're getting ready for their audit. They discovered that they hadn't put those in. 01:58:14
And so then they were journal entered in. 01:58:18
And that's when. 01:58:21
That's when they were entered, but the report had already been submitted to the Transparent Utah website. 01:58:23
Again. 01:58:28
As far as a motive of was it intentional or not? 01:58:31
We did not look into that. 01:58:35
Timing wise, when those entries were made, it made sense that they. 01:58:38
They were made. 01:58:41
And, and I know that's what our finding was, was that they weren't included with the original upload. 01:58:43
And that's the recommendation that they have to upload all of those ones after when the audit report is finished. 01:58:49
Going forward. 01:58:54
I got one more. Well, just a comment for the citizens. 01:58:55
I think the citizens went through quite an emotional rollercoaster, or at least I did over the past 18 months and I think it's. 01:59:02
You can recognize. 01:59:08
When you have two governments like a city, especially leadership in the city saying this is the way it is and the state auditor. 01:59:10
Saying this is the way it's it. 01:59:16
And I know I felt the heat because I kept saying like no state auditor, state auditor. And I think. 01:59:18
I just want to make. 01:59:24
You know, that's a hard thing for citizens to. 01:59:25
Lose trust right when 2 conflicting government. 01:59:28
I just want citizens to understand that there's there's a hotline and. 01:59:31
During this two years, we kept screaming like, just call the state auditor calls it. What is that phone number? What is the 01:59:34
service? Real quick, Just make sure they understand so they're holding us accountable so if those conflicts ever arise. 01:59:39
They can call your office and clear it out because I'm grateful for me. 01:59:44
I hope this clears my name. 01:59:48
This isn't a. 01:59:50
Brad, you know bad juju going the other way of. 01:59:51
Everything but like. 01:59:55
I think it's really important that. 01:59:56
They don't feel like they can't call or sit back and go. Which government is. 01:59:58
You know, so what's that hotliner? So. So the state auditor's website is auditor Utah Gov. 02:00:02
And it'll pull up. 02:00:09
You know the state, there's a web page in the top right hand corner. It says a thing for hotline. 02:00:10
If you click on that, it'll provide. 02:00:15
Both a web form that you can fill out information if there's documentation that you can upload. 02:00:16
Or a phone number for that you can call. 02:00:21
Yeah. And that that would be? 02:00:22
Your options Fill out the web form, send us an e-mail, give us a call and walk through the information. 02:00:25
I will. 02:00:31
If we're making a plug for the state's hotline. 02:00:32
I would tell the public. 02:00:34
The more specific information that you can provide. 02:00:36
The better. 02:00:40
You know, sometimes we receive complaints and says well. 02:00:43
The mayor was really mean. 02:00:46
I'm sorry. 02:00:48
I tried. There's there's nothing that we can do about that kind of complaint. 02:00:50
Other than just. 02:00:53
Commiserate with him for a minute and and send them on their way. But if you can say hey. 02:00:54
The city. 02:01:00
Took this action and they didn't have a public hearing like they were required to on this day. It makes it really easy for us to 02:01:03
go out. 02:01:07
Pull the agenda. 02:01:11
Listen to the meeting. 02:01:12
Verify what happened and. 02:01:13
Then call the. 02:01:15
Where's your public notice? Because we didn't. 02:01:16
It wasn't a public notice website. 02:01:18
And then we can quickly. 02:01:20
Respond to those cities and help them do things. 02:01:22
A lot of the times. 02:01:24
That doesn't mean that that action. 02:01:26
Won't happen. 02:01:27
But we would contact the city and say hey. 02:01:29
You adopted your budget and you didn't. 02:01:31
Have a public hearing like you were supposed to. 02:01:33
Do it again. 02:01:35
And then they would have to re advertise it. 02:01:36
Hold the public hearing. 02:01:38
And then? 02:01:39
They may come to the exact same. 02:01:40
And result of adopting that budget or taking the action that they propose to do before. 02:01:42
But that way. 02:01:47
It's happens in. 02:01:48
In the public eye, how it's supposed to. By statutes, Sure. 02:01:50
OK. Well, Seth, thank you so much for sorry, that was just my last question. Is Vineyard currently compliant with everything? 02:01:53
Just want to make sure. 02:02:00
Good to go forward. 02:02:02
We have all those things to clean up. You could look it up right now if you wanted to, if you have your computer. 02:02:05
You can go to. 02:02:10
Auditor, Utah Gov. 02:02:11
And and anyone in the public could do this. You can go to auditor.utah.gov and the banner across the top. 02:02:13
Will say there's a button for local governments, and if you clicked on that button for local governments, it'll pull up a 02:02:18
dashboard. 02:02:21
And the second tile down on the left says compliance dashboard. 02:02:24
And it's available for everybody. You can click on compliance dashboard. 02:02:29
Type in Vineyard and it will pull up. 02:02:32
PDF downloadable report that will say anything that the city is missing at any given time. 02:02:35
So if you're, if you're concerned about that as a governing body member, it's a tool that we put out there. Awesome. So you can go 02:02:42
out there and check on it anytime. 02:02:45
And if it pops up. 02:02:49
Green is good. 02:02:51
Yellow is delinquent. 02:02:52
Red is bad. 02:02:53
So we training. 02:02:55
Can I ask now? 02:02:56
So on your previous response. 02:02:58
To Councilman Nair. 02:03:00
And you went through the. 02:03:03
Conversation about. 02:03:05
Redoing a process. 02:03:07
What in your? 02:03:10
Opinion. Umm. 02:03:12
Is the obligation. 02:03:13
Of a City Council. 02:03:15
If you think a process was misfollowed previously. 02:03:17
To revisit that. 02:03:20
I think that's probably one that you'd probably need to talk to your. 02:03:28
Your city attorney about. 02:03:30
On whether or not they felt like it needed to be redone. 02:03:32
There is nothing in statute that. 02:03:35
That doesn't say hey. 02:03:37
We went through this process. 02:03:39
We adopted this policy. 02:03:41
I'm not entirely happy with it. 02:03:43
Let's bring it back and talk about it again. 02:03:46
And or change it. 02:03:50
Obviously if you if one of those decisions was something that was contractual and now you've got another third party that's. 02:03:51
That's relying on that contract. 02:03:57
You would have to talk to your attorney to see if that action was. 02:04:00
Void or avoidable? 02:04:03
Because of whatever reasons. 02:04:04
And we would not. 02:04:07
I wouldn't go into that. 02:04:09
I won't be open. 02:04:10
Pint on that but. 02:04:11
If it's something else that's that's a city policy or anything else like that and you felt like it. 02:04:12
Didn't receive the. 02:04:16
You know what it deserves. 02:04:19
You can take it back and you can. 02:04:21
You can look at things again. 02:04:23
Things change. 02:04:24
So you can go back and look at those as many times as you feel like you need to. 02:04:25
You have a lot of other business to do too, so. 02:04:29
Yeah, use your time wise, yeah. 02:04:31
You good? 02:04:33
Yeah, OK, awesome. 02:04:35
Thank you, Seth. 02:04:36
Kim, appreciate your time. You guys are awesome for coming down and and explaining that to us. I really, really do appreciate it. 02:04:38
Also, thank Nora. 02:04:41
She's wonderful. 02:04:45
I'm trying to be conscientious of time. I'm going to. 02:04:47
Tony, do we have any public comments today? Did anyone sign the sheet? 02:04:52
OK, awesome. So we'll. 02:04:56
Jump over that, I'm going to. 02:04:58
Do you want to ask? 02:05:00
Do we have any? 02:05:02
Public comments. 02:05:02
OK, sorry I forgot to mention this Chris before you. 02:05:05
Take off. 02:05:09
Audit committees. 02:05:11
Did, did we? Are we setting up an audit committee? 02:05:12
I think that's helpful, pertinent too. 02:05:15
The discussion you're saying? 02:05:17
OK, perfect. 02:05:18
Thank you. 02:05:21
Wasn't that subcommittee? 02:05:21
Isn't that me and David already made? 02:05:23
That's what we actually. 02:05:25
Well, like a formal audit, I think the subcommittee was to help establish the formal audit committee. We'd have more than. 02:05:27
Just three council members on the. 02:05:32
Audit committee typically. 02:05:35
Policies. All that's great. 02:05:38
Thank you, Sir. 02:05:41
Awesome. 02:05:43
OK, public comments. We didn't have any hands up. 02:05:44
If it's all right with everybody, I'd like to skip over 5 and 6 and maybe jump to the consent items. There was, I know that there 02:05:47
was some discussion. 02:05:51
I wasn't here last week obviously on 7.3. 02:05:56
So can I maybe get a motion? 02:05:59
To. 02:06:01
Can I make a motion to take? 02:06:04
7.3 off the consent item to allow us to talk about it but approve items. 02:06:05
7.1 and 7.2 I think we all agree. 02:06:11
I'd second. 02:06:14
OK, all in favor. 02:06:15
Aye, are we skipping reports or just? 02:06:18
You get doing them later if we have I was thinking, so it's getting pushed up at 8:00. 02:06:20
I'd like to. 02:06:27
How would you guys like to handle this? 02:06:28
I would just love a brief report from the subcommittees on. 02:06:30
Staffing and. 02:06:33
Just the ones so the public can be aware of what what's going on. 02:06:34
OK, I can. 02:06:38
Do you want to jump onto the? 02:06:40
When you have staffing. 02:06:41
Sure, there's a motion on the table first. Oh yeah, let's do motion with emotion. 02:06:42
Did we that passed though, I believe the yeah. Do we approve that? 02:06:46
OK, yeah, so the. 02:06:50
Staffing subcommittee, We've. 02:06:53
We were asked to go ahead and put together a sort of. 02:06:56
Mission statement essentially for the city as. 02:06:58
As we interview people, we can give them an idea of. 02:07:01
Exactly what you know we stand for and so forth and and as they went through all the. 02:07:04
Campaign promises. 02:07:09
Our various various candidates running at 1:00. 02:07:11
We've really kind of. 02:07:14
Dissolved into like like 4 points. 02:07:16
And so those points are. 02:07:19
We stand for true transparency for fiscal responsibility. 02:07:21
For personal integrity. 02:07:25
In public involvement. 02:07:27
And so those and those are the action points and there are various. 02:07:29
Ways to implement those, but those are the main. 02:07:33
Many things we want, we stand for. 02:07:35
OK, awesome. 02:07:37
And I think, and that's I'd ask if anyone else in the council has any other. 02:07:38
Additions to the outer clarifications. 02:07:42
Jacob, do you have anything? No that. 02:07:45
That's great. OK. 02:07:47
Just while we're talking about it, it's. 02:07:49
Come up in emails through HR. 02:07:52
We've received. 02:07:55
Applications for positions within the city. 02:07:56
I understand it's your intent to have. 02:08:00
David Larae, Jacob Wood and yourself on that. 02:08:04
Initial maybe interview, yeah. 02:08:08
Yep, that's the subcommittee. I just wanted to express willingness to participate in any of those should the need rise or the 02:08:10
availability. 02:08:13
Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate the the willingness to help out there. So. 02:08:17
Awesome. 02:08:21
So we do have like we have. 02:08:22
Put four different resumes for attorney and we. 02:08:23
And we've got a couple for. 02:08:26
Finance Director, Yeah, yeah, we have a couple of really. So we're not ready to move on. 02:08:28
All those yet, but correct. Yeah, we're still working through that, so. 02:08:33
Awesome, so no recommendations for certain. 02:08:37
Great. 02:08:39
Sorry, any updates on staffing positions or? 02:08:43
Just not in there. 02:08:45
So still just kind of in a. 02:08:50
Visioning phase. 02:08:52
Yeah. I think, I think we're still kind of assessing kind of what we're doing. We've received obviously some resignations that 02:08:53
are. 02:08:55
Dated for later in this month, so we're kind of working through that I. 02:08:58
And trying to. 02:09:03
Figure out. 02:09:04
Best practices. I think that. 02:09:05
Our intent obviously for, you know. 02:09:07
Is to run our. 02:09:09
City of the most. 02:09:11
Fiscally responsible. 02:09:12
Way that we can. 02:09:13
And while providing the maximum. 02:09:14
Value for the services we provide so. 02:09:17
That's kind of what we're. 02:09:20
Like you said, as we're just going through the visioning phase and. 02:09:21
And so forth so. 02:09:25
OK, thank you. Yep, no problem. 02:09:26
So we tabled 7.3. We'll talk about that later. Umm. 02:09:29
8.1 I know that there was. 02:09:33
Some a quick discussion 8.1. 02:09:36
Similar to the city attorney and. 02:09:40
Doing an emergency approval and. 02:09:43
Just putting it out to bid I move that we. 02:09:46
Table 8.1. 02:09:49
To allow us. 02:09:51
To put it out to bid. 02:09:53
To just follow the normal process. 02:09:54
2nd. 02:09:56
OK, awesome. Sounds good. 02:09:58
All in favor. 02:10:00
OK, awesome. 02:10:02
Hold on, sorry. 02:10:05
Didn't vote yet. 02:10:06
So appointments are usually like. 02:10:10
So we're just. 02:10:12
Having a, what's the process? For whatever reason, you're just going through it. 02:10:14
Like hiring process or? 02:10:17
Yeah, just put it out. 02:10:19
Just wanted to see. 02:10:22
Well, I think that this I think the city should put out for. 02:10:23
Not bid, but put out. 02:10:28
To hire and and allow. 02:10:30
The current or deputy and others to interview for that process instead of a point. 02:10:33
So I just think, give us. 02:10:39
Two or three weeks to. 02:10:41
Post and go through that process. 02:10:42
Well, to take based on the code that we approved previously. 02:10:45
It's my understanding that the mayor would bring the recommendations to us for that kind of position. 02:10:50
And the council would still be able to proceed with a panel interview. 02:10:55
Is that correct? 02:10:58
Yes, and we would. And by putting it off, we don't need default, we wouldn't need an emergency appointment, correct, because he's 02:10:59
very correct. So we're trying, we're trying to avoid that. 02:11:03
Correct of just. 02:11:08
Make sure that we're going through all the processes to. 02:11:10
Just, you know, look at all available candidates. 02:11:13
I'm fine to do that. Whatever you guys feel comfortable with I. 02:11:17
I'm that's totally fine with me, so. 02:11:20
OK. Yeah. If that's the process, then I'll vote. Yeah. OK, OK. 02:11:22
All righty. Sounds good. 02:11:26
We have to close the music session here on the agenda, but we don't have a need for that tonight, so I think with nothing else. 02:11:29
We are going to go ahead and adjourn. 02:11:35
7.307.3 Do we want to discuss that? 02:11:39
Or do you want to? 02:11:44
Discuss it. Let's go ahead and discuss it real quick. 02:11:45
So. 02:11:48
Yeah, the idea is that. 02:11:49
Not holding. 02:11:51
Meetings from six last week. Mayor, you weren't here. 02:11:52
It was. 02:11:56
You guys had all the fun without me. Yeah, it's like 4 hours getting late into the night and citizens leave at about 8. And so the 02:11:57
idea was that we would. 02:12:01
And instead of doing recurring special City Council meetings, it was that we would have in the off weeks, a. 02:12:05
Reoccurring. 02:12:12
Work session and that that work session could be done via zoom. 02:12:14
To make it a little bit easier. 02:12:18
For people to attend, but that we could get a lot of. 02:12:20
Things done during those work sessions. 02:12:24
I think that we're open for suggestions. Mayor, you weren't here about your agenda if you want to adjust, but the. 02:12:27
I want to point out that if we do a work session that we wouldn't be able to. 02:12:32
Don't do any business, correct? Sure, correct. Yeah. So, so, so that means our, our, our business votes would be. 02:12:37
Every two weeks, correct? 02:12:42
I think I think that that's kind of where I'm. 02:12:44
Sensing what I'd like to lean is maybe just do work sessions and with work sessions we don't need. 02:12:46
Do we need to? 02:12:51
We don't need to approve those. 02:12:53
Every week they need to be they have no, no, I'm yeah, I'm sorry. We of course we need to notice them, but we wouldn't have to go 02:12:54
into justice through. 02:12:58
An amendment. 02:13:03
The work sessions, is that correct? We could just notice them. 02:13:04
We have to vote for the annual. 02:13:09
Annual calendar. We need it. Yeah, we didn't know which ones are work sessions on the calendar. 02:13:11
OK. Yeah, we would. 02:13:17
Yeah, we need a calendar set up with all the. 02:13:18
Step ahead of time. 02:13:21
OK, then we can change live their electronic I think. Yeah, for sure. 02:13:22
Let's do this. Do you want to look at it throughout the week? Let's do that. If we could look at it and maybe just e-mail back and 02:13:25
I'll reach out to you guys and see. 02:13:29
Because one of the thoughts I had too is if we could do work sessions, perhaps during. 02:13:34
Business hours to. 02:13:38
Mitigate. 02:13:39
Strain on staff, I think that'd be helpful too just so let's just work through on this throughout the week and. 02:13:40
And just do that so. 02:13:46
I see that everyone nodding same motion to continue this item till next week so we have some time to review and 2nd. 02:13:48
That's exactly what I was looking for. 02:13:56
Aye, all right. 02:13:59
OK. Anything else? I think that's it. So we will adjourn the meeting. Thanks, guys. 02:14:01
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Transcript

Event transcript
Go ahead and get started. Is this on? Yeah, there we go. 00:09:47
As soon as Councilman hold away, we'll take a seat. 00:09:50
Just kidding, Jake. 00:09:53
All righty, today is February 3rd, 2026. It is 6:00 PM. 00:09:55
I am Mayor Zach Stratton. I'll be presiding in this meeting and I'd like to open up the. 00:10:00
Council meeting. 00:10:04
Today we are going to have Carson Walker. 00:10:05
Give us our opening. 00:10:08
Prayer and then. 00:10:09
Pledge of Allegiance, so. 00:10:11
Carson, come on up. 00:10:13
And then when you're done. 00:10:14
You get a pen. 00:10:16
From our recorder. 00:10:16
Our Father in heaven. 00:10:22
We thank thee for this opportunity to get together and to. 00:10:23
Hear about and. 00:10:28
Be involved in our. 00:10:32
Community and. 00:10:34
Do our civil. 00:10:36
Civic engagement and. 00:10:38
We pray for they. 00:10:40
Spirit and guidance to. 00:10:41
Help the people of Vineyard into. 00:10:44
Provide. 00:10:50
A blessing for the leadership that they can. 00:10:52
Umm. 00:10:56
Help the community. 00:10:59
And. 00:11:01
This part of our country. 00:11:03
And we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. 00:11:05
Amendment. Thank you so much. 00:11:08
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of. 00:11:18
And to the Republic for which it stands. 00:11:23
One nation under God. 00:11:25
Indivisible with liberty and justice for all. 00:11:28
Awesome. Thank you so much. 00:11:35
And make sure you wear that pin everywhere you go. 00:11:39
OK. 00:11:41
All righty, we're going to jump right into our presentations. 00:11:44
This evening we have Chris Harding is going to give us a start us off. 00:11:48
What the presentation is as a. 00:11:52
Point of clarification, So Chris was the gentleman that performed the second audit that we had done last year. 00:11:56
Focused on operations and. 00:12:03
RDA and so forth. So we've asked him to come talk about next steps in that and just kind of walk us through that, so I will. 00:12:05
Turn the time over to Chris. Do you need? 00:12:13
OK, you. 00:12:18
The computer there for I realized last time, my Mac does not play well. It doesn't play super well. 00:12:19
Is it any of this right here? OK, awesome. 00:12:26
Like shows me. 00:13:12
Sorry, sorry. 00:13:17
Captions. 00:13:42
That's what I want. 00:13:44
Let's go to view. 00:14:08
Slides. 00:14:11
Slash errors. 00:14:15
OK, presenter mode. 00:14:18
Housing. 00:14:53
Yeah. 00:14:59
It's okay, I could. 00:15:03
Do you just want to present it like that and I'll? 00:15:05
You guys can probably. 00:15:07
I just brought my notes but. 00:15:10
It probably doesn't matter. We don't need to be all. 00:15:12
Super professional, private, doesn't matter if you guys can see my notes. 00:15:15
Yeah. 00:15:26
Someone has a piece. 00:15:38
Oh, this is a PC. We're just trying to make it so that I could see my notes when the slides go up. 00:15:42
Yeah, yeah, we can just do it again. 00:15:48
Yeah. 00:15:50
This way. 00:15:53
Yeah, sorry about that, Sir. No, that's OK. 00:15:54
All righty, yeah. 00:15:59
And then I don't have to look down here, I can kind of glance up here. 00:16:00
All right, so. 00:16:04
Yeah, so last year I did a. 00:16:06
Agreed upon procedures. 00:16:09
Where? 00:16:11
Certain things that. 00:16:12
Prior council wanted me to check out. 00:16:14
It's very. 00:16:18
Factually, uh. 00:16:19
A base that is very different from. 00:16:21
An audit like for your guys's financial statements where an opinion is given. 00:16:23
It's literally just. 00:16:28
The facts like. 00:16:30
For an example like. 00:16:31
I looked at 10 invoices and. 00:16:33
Were seven of them had supporting documentations, 3 did not. It's very factually based. There's again, no no opinions. But with 00:16:35
that I did a supplemental report. 00:16:41
That was. 00:16:48
Some observations and some recommendations. 00:16:50
And from that? 00:16:54
There were. 00:16:56
Seven different areas that. 00:16:57
I looked at everything from the. 00:16:59
RDA to mills and travel and. 00:17:01
The fleet as well. 00:17:04
But then Vineyard reached out, asked if I could. 00:17:07
Do some more in depth work. 00:17:11
Focusing on just the RDA. 00:17:14
And help to implement some of the recommendations or to to get the ball rolling. 00:17:17
For. 00:17:22
One bid. 00:17:25
And then for another one it's. 00:17:26
The other sections one through 4. 00:17:28
And then 6:00 and 7:00. 00:17:30
Just to help. 00:17:33
Proposed some policies, hopefully that. 00:17:34
Management will then take and accept. 00:17:37
Edit how they want. 00:17:40
And and and move forward. So let's see. 00:17:42
Yeah, I kind of went over this. Agreed upon procedures are factual. 00:17:47
What? 00:17:52
From my observations, there was a lot of. 00:17:53
Reliance for Vineyard. 00:17:56
There was a lot of trust there. There were some verification, some of the receipts and invoices were there for these different 00:17:59
areas. 00:18:02
But for some of them, it was just a big question mark. 00:18:06
So the again kind of going into detail for the first one, the. 00:18:10
RDA What I'm planning to do is a deep dive. 00:18:14
Into those remediation costs where? 00:18:18
I came back from last. 00:18:21
December and said. 00:18:23
Hey, with a lot of these things, it's just a question mark. 00:18:24
I don't know if that stuff because it wasn't in the billing documents. 00:18:28
The scope of this work would be to go and actually. 00:18:32
Find out. 00:18:35
If it wasn't in the. 00:18:37
The billing document summary that I was given, we're going to go further into that. The last job was. 00:18:38
300. 00:18:47
50 some odd hours. 00:18:48
For all 7 areas. 00:18:50
This proposal number one, this is a bid for. It's about 300 and. 00:18:53
33 hours. It was roughly about 300 hours. 00:18:59
To do a deep dive into the RDA. 00:19:03
But I. 00:19:05
Put I put some contingency hours in there. So that's what gets it up to the 330. 00:19:06
The time frame on this is about February through May that I'm. 00:19:13
Hoping and estimating. 00:19:18
That this would be again. 00:19:21
More in depth. 00:19:23
Where going out to the. 00:19:24
The folks that are doing the work for the RDA, the contractors, possibly subcontractors. 00:19:27
Trying to see what. 00:19:34
Documentation and support they can provide. 00:19:35
To help. 00:19:39
Is I don't know. My term is to give us the warm fuzzies, you know? 00:19:40
They put $10,000 on a bill. 00:19:45
What is there to substantiate that? 00:19:48
To see the actual work that. 00:19:52
Was performed. 00:19:55
Let's see. 00:19:57
Proposal 2 is a little bit. 00:20:06
Uh, different. This is the sections one through 4:00 and 6:00 and 7:00. 00:20:09
In that supplemental. 00:20:13
When we. 00:20:14
It's a lot different in these areas, that's why. 00:20:15
Chapter 5. The RDA is separate in and of itself. 00:20:18
We're having to. 00:20:21
It's much more involved. 00:20:23
To look at that RDA and those costs. 00:20:25
Because. 00:20:27
Vineyard as a whole, the city is not. 00:20:28
In control of all those documents we have to work with sub. 00:20:30
A subcontractor or a contractor in their Subs. 00:20:34
P cards, travel, cash, these are all documents. 00:20:39
And policies that. 00:20:43
Vineyard should have. 00:20:44
And So what the implementation support. 00:20:46
That I'm proposing. 00:20:49
For one through 4:00 and 6:00 and 7:00. 00:20:51
This is where helping management to set up. 00:20:53
Clear policies. I've kind of told this before when I initially got the. 00:20:57
Policy document. I thought I was looking at the P card policy document. It was 12 pages and I was like. 00:21:05
OK, well, I mean, that's not not too bad. And then I realized that was like all 12 pages, wasn't just. 00:21:11
Card policy. It was like. 00:21:17
Maybe it wasn't all of Vineyard's policies, but it was all the policies. 00:21:20
That work that I was looking at, I was like, oh, OK. 00:21:24
This is kind of an indication. 00:21:26
We're a little light on policies. 00:21:28
So in this proposal. 00:21:30
I'll try and help Vineyard. 00:21:33
With that to see. 00:21:35
OK, here's where we need to change beef up. 00:21:36
Policies for P cards or travel or food. 00:21:39
One of the things I I noted. 00:21:42
Like just to give you an example we'll take. 00:21:45
Travel, for example. 00:21:47
There was a travel reimbursement form. 00:21:51
That I looked at. 00:21:54
And. 00:21:56
The you know there was nothing written down. 00:21:57
But the general consensus of the employees I interviewed? 00:22:00
Was that? 00:22:03
They would only fill that form out if they needed to get reimbursement. 00:22:05
That the general. 00:22:09
Sense of. 00:22:11
Approval for a trip was kind of worked out with their management, the overall budget approval. 00:22:12
Was done. 00:22:18
When you guys approved? 00:22:19
The city budget at. 00:22:21
The beginning of the year, whenever your budget time frame is. 00:22:23
And that then each respective department would just manage their funds. 00:22:26
From that. 00:22:30
Essentially. 00:22:31
That they had the approval. 00:22:32
Sometimes approvals were documented, sometimes we could find some emails. 00:22:33
But there were a lot of times where it was hard for us to. 00:22:38
Be able to pinpoint. 00:22:42
Here's the inception where discussion happened about. 00:22:43
Do we need to take this trip and what's the justification? 00:22:46
All the way up to. 00:22:50
You know, did we get a good deal for our airline tickets? 00:22:51
Where are we going? 00:22:54
And then all the receipts that go along with that. 00:22:56
So as we're going forward. 00:23:00
This proposals to say. 00:23:02
You know, what policies can we establish, what training can we give? 00:23:04
To management the different department heads as their. 00:23:08
Going forward, how are we going to change it from what's being done in the past to how we want to do it in the future, so that 00:23:12
when a question arises, whether from the council or outside, hey, I saw a vineyard at a. 00:23:18
Down in Saint George at a conference, What were they doing there? 00:23:24
The the council members can reach out to that department. 00:23:27
And the department can say, Oh yeah, well. 00:23:30
Here's why we're going. Here's our justification. Here's our form that shows. 00:23:32
The discussion we had that it was planned and it was within budget. Here's we we went out and got. 00:23:37
Three bids for. 00:23:43
Are not three bids, but we checked three different. 00:23:44
Hotel locations and. 00:23:46
We chose this one because it was the most economical and fit our needs. Was closest to the. 00:23:48
The venue. 00:23:54
So that's what we're doing in this. 00:23:56
Second proposal and again that's P cards, travel, food. 00:23:59
Cash. Utilities. 00:24:03
I apologize. I don't know why I have it in there. The vehicle fleet is also going to be. 00:24:07
Part of that. 00:24:11
And I'm I'm envisioning this second proposal happening after the RDA. 00:24:12
It's possible there could be stuff work that that could be for waiting for something on the RDA. 00:24:17
Proposal that we could work at earlier than May. 00:24:22
But I lined it up. 00:24:26
At least on this presentation taking place. 00:24:27
After the RDA sold about May through September. 00:24:29
And I figured about 271 hours is what I was. 00:24:33
Bidding on. 00:24:37
On this. 00:24:39
Proposal. 00:24:41
Let's see, yeah. So overall. 00:24:43
The time phase for the RDA, January through May. 00:24:46
For the second one, May through September and then any. 00:24:50
What I'm calling project closeout. 00:24:53
What happened in? 00:24:55
In October, just. 00:24:57
Making sure that management has all their training, any questions that they need. 00:24:59
Hopefully. 00:25:03
I'm envisioning that as we. 00:25:06
Get these policies and procedures. 00:25:08
Up and running. 00:25:10
Management has looked through them, made any changes because again. 00:25:11
Management here in Vineyard. 00:25:15
They're the experts. 00:25:17
I'm going to be coming in. 00:25:18
With a. 00:25:20
An outside perspective. 00:25:21
Of what I think good policy is. But again. 00:25:23
It will need to be some back and forth with management. 00:25:26
They'll need to kind of wrap their arms around it and then hopefully bring it. 00:25:29
Eventually to the council for you guys to pass your. 00:25:33
Policy setting body here in the city. 00:25:36
So these dates might not be. 00:25:39
Exactly. But that's when I'm. 00:25:41
Shooting for one of the things I want to emphasize, we kind of talked about this in our meeting with the mayor. 00:25:43
The where we're at now. 00:25:50
Didn't happen overnight. 00:25:53
So Chris Harding's got a timeline up there. It may not. 00:25:55
Hold right to that it's not. This will not be something that's going to be solved. 00:25:59
Overnight with the RDA with these other. 00:26:04
Areas that need improvement. 00:26:08
But I think. 00:26:11
Vineyard has made a great first step. 00:26:12
Especially with where we're. 00:26:14
Last year. 00:26:16
And uh. 00:26:17
Yeah, I'd open it up for any questions that. 00:26:18
Council members of the mayor might have Awesome. Thank you so much for that presentation. Let's yeah open up for questions or. 00:26:21
Comments from the Council should we start? 00:26:27
Over here other you. 00:26:30
Let's start with Ezra. 00:26:32
Just as you were going through some of these policies. 00:26:39
How has it been working with staff? 00:26:43
The staff have been excellent. 00:26:46
I would say every time I had a question, especially Zach, was probably the one I worked with the most. 00:26:50
And that guy was Johnny on the spot. He most of the time he was turning stuff around either the same day or the next day. 00:26:56
I rarely had to wait for. 00:27:03
For Zach. 00:27:05
The other folks as well when I had questions for them. 00:27:07
They. 00:27:11
They were very responsive. 00:27:12
And and when I came out for interviews related to. 00:27:14
Travel and the vehicles, the interviews that I had. 00:27:18
They were very inviting, welcoming. Nobody was standoffish or. 00:27:22
Was like. 00:27:27
I'm not going to let you interview me. They were all very good to work with. So yeah, staff was great. 00:27:28
Great and. 00:27:36
When do you anticipate having a formal proposal? 00:27:37
For us to review. 00:27:41
The the formal proposal, I have sent something that is much more detailed than what's here to David. 00:27:44
Mayor and Jacob I. 00:27:52
I apologize I can send that out to the full council. That'd be great. Are all your guys's emails? 00:27:54
If I just go online. 00:27:58
Yeah, get him there. 00:28:00
Yeah. 00:28:01
Yeah. 00:28:03
We have one. It's like Vineyard council at Oh, OK. 00:28:05
Perfect, I will send it to that. 00:28:11
Thank you. That's it for me. 00:28:16
David. 00:28:18
Yes, thank you very much for that. 00:28:22
Great proposal and. 00:28:23
We've, I want to acknowledge we have received a proposal for us is a first. 00:28:25
The first project. 00:28:30
We have that in and I've. 00:28:31
I've asked the. 00:28:34
City manager in the past and and. 00:28:37
I asked staff to help us understand what the next steps were to be able to get. 00:28:40
To allocate dedicated funds at the RDA and that's. I've asked twice about that, but in the. 00:28:44
All the changeover stuff that's gotten. 00:28:50
Fall through the cracks, apparently. 00:28:51
So we do need to follow through on that and make sure and see what has to be done so we can get that money's allocated to be able 00:28:53
to. 00:28:56
Take it, Take that on. 00:28:59
We have the proposal as. 00:29:00
Excellent, I will. 00:29:02
I will share it with everyone. 00:29:03
Sure. Thank you. You have already and then Jacob Holloway has it already. 00:29:04
So I'll get to you SO. 00:29:09
Do we have a city manager right now? 00:29:11
We do. We have a city manager right now. 00:29:15
Well, I don't think we do at the moment, but we did. Eric is still. 00:29:17
Under contract. 00:29:23
So yeah, so we. 00:29:23
Sort of do. 00:29:25
It's nice to. 00:29:28
So anyway, but that was but yeah, we'll, we'll keep following up on that. Make that happen. 00:29:29
So we can go ahead, Jacob. No, I appreciate your work. 00:29:34
On the. 00:29:38
On the audit, it's, you know, the RDA is a really complex thing, so going forward. 00:29:38
Digging deep and finding a proper. 00:29:45
Procedures to put in place to make sure you know we know. 00:29:47
Where the money's going and. 00:29:50
Everything like that, I think my biggest. 00:29:52
Issue to RDA is the institutional knowledge it's. 00:29:55
It's been passed down by person to person and. 00:29:59
How do you see yourself tackling that? 00:30:02
It's going to be a lot of walkthroughs and interviews. The walkthrough I did last year. 00:30:04
Going out to. 00:30:13
I don't know specifically what site it was, but you can tell the workers that have been there even before it was an RDA when it 00:30:16
was an actual. 00:30:19
When the. 00:30:23
Steel mill Geneva still was up and running. 00:30:25
Like you can tell who has the institutional knowledge. 00:30:29
But it's going to be. 00:30:32
Hands down. 00:30:34
A lot of that where we're talking to individuals because I feel like. 00:30:35
The folks doing the work and the remediation will have the institutional knowledge. 00:30:40
I'm a little bit worried on the City side, who's got the institutional knowledge. 00:30:45
So. 00:30:50
Or yeah, I'm going to have to ask questions, do some interviews, might have to reach out to some folks that. 00:30:51
Might have left. 00:30:57
City service, but. 00:30:58
Sure. 00:31:00
We'll do the best we can. 00:31:01
Thank you. 00:31:02
Anything else that's going to happen? 00:31:03
Yeah. 00:31:07
Having served here for two years. 00:31:09
And. 00:31:11
I'm really grateful for all the citizens. I mean, I was kind of the. 00:31:13
He turned to this person and asked hard questions. 00:31:16
About our cars being a. 00:31:20
In Disneyland and in different places and. 00:31:22
Legally. Legally. 00:31:26
Because I just wanted to walk through this. 00:31:28
Because we didn't have any. 00:31:30
Policies in place. 00:31:32
All of the staff. 00:31:35
When citizens reported different things. 00:31:36
That wasn't against the policy, it was just there. I mean, there is no policy. 00:31:40
There was a. 00:31:45
There was. 00:31:46
Very brief, Paul. It was very light on on vehicles. It was more of the stance of like. 00:31:48
Yeah, I can't even say it's. 00:31:57
Like drivers should be safe, but that's not It was more than that. 00:31:59
But it was less than. 00:32:02
Like this is. 00:32:04
Than what you would find in a normal. 00:32:07
Fleet policy. 00:32:09
Keeping track of miles, making sure there's a. 00:32:11
A log, that is. 00:32:14
Verified or reconciled on a on a regular basis. I mean like how many miles total but like. 00:32:16
Somebody going home could. 00:32:22
Hey, we're. 00:32:24
Going to Vegas tonight and coming back and take the car and. 00:32:26
There's no policy against that. 00:32:29
Yeah, I mean, it might have raised some eyebrows, but again, that's why. 00:32:31
Good policy is so important because. 00:32:34
Even if you had someone dead to rights, you know you took the city vehicle to Disneyland. There the policy wasn't necessarily 00:32:37
saying city vehicles. 00:32:42
I mean, it would say stuff like it should be used for. 00:32:46
City business. 00:32:49
So I mean. 00:32:52
Technically, if you were riding with a coworker, you had a phone call discussing city business on your way to Disneyland. Now, let 00:32:53
me be clear too. 00:32:56
I did not in the in this. 00:33:00
Audit. 00:33:01
I we did not track a specific trip or a vehicle to Disneyland somebody might have. 00:33:02
Notice that or. 00:33:07
Allege that. 00:33:09
Right. I just want to be clear. Yeah, we did not note any vehicles in Disneyland. 00:33:10
One of the things we did notice was that like fuel UPS. 00:33:16
There were some pretty big fuel UPS like 100 plus gallons. 00:33:19
Most vehicles don't hold that. So I mean there were some questions that. 00:33:24
Probably should be asked, but even then there's no policy about right getting 100 gallons. And so therefore if there's no policy, 00:33:27
yes you can. I just want to make sure. 00:33:32
That staff don't feel like. 00:33:36
This is their fault because I mean, you know, when you have no policy. 00:33:39
In place people, you know, citizens need to understand that this is not on them if they're seeing. 00:33:43
A vehicle. I mean, obviously people might feel like how is there no policy, but the buck stops at the council and the mayor level, 00:33:48
yeah. 00:33:51
I mean, I'm not in the business of setting up cities, but vineyards relatively new and I mean when you think about getting a city 00:33:55
up and running, which I. 00:33:59
Have never really thought about it before, but there's probably some important things that supersede policies like. 00:34:03
Do we have clean water? You know, is the natural gas line going to explode? Our contractors, you know, building houses that are 00:34:09
safe and structures that are safe. 00:34:13
You know, policy comes a little bit after, but I think now is definitely the right time that. 00:34:19
The city's up and running. 00:34:23
It is appropriate to have good policies now going forward and to make sure people are held accountable. Yeah, I would not say the 00:34:25
staff should feel bad. 00:34:29
Right. Any sense? 00:34:34
Having said that, we're in kind of a limbo until September of getting a new policy in place. Like that's a long, we can probably 00:34:35
move a little quicker. I mean uncertain things like. 00:34:40
You know, because obviously I think the Council has an appetite for just. 00:34:45
You know, ensuring. 00:34:49
That, you know, it's not just. 00:34:51
The cars. 00:34:53
So I would. 00:34:55
If we could prioritize those easy P card. 00:34:56
Yeah, I first vehicle we should be able to prioritize those because a lot of it too is. 00:35:01
I'm going to be familiar with the policy. 00:35:07
It'll be good to get it. 00:35:10
Quickly and upfront. 00:35:12
Into the hands of the respective staff who are going to have it so they can start digesting it and saying. 00:35:13
Hey, yeah, this will work for us or hey. 00:35:19
Right here. This doesn't really apply to Vineyard. We don't do XY and Z. 00:35:21
OK. How should we modify it so that we'll fit Vineyard? 00:35:25
And help help. 00:35:28
Management to understand. 00:35:30
And to look for ways. 00:35:32
That they can be. 00:35:34
A control where? 00:35:35
Again, we're not just putting a policy out there. 00:35:37
That people might read once or never read and it just sits there. 00:35:40
But that it will call for certain procedures a monthly. 00:35:44
Check of the vehicle mileage logs or whatever and how we're going to reconcile those, Yeah. 00:35:48
Yeah, because. 00:35:53
As people, I mean, we're going to talk about the Ledger and stuff coming up that like as, as people looked at total spend, it was 00:35:54
like. 00:35:57
How do you have a control on that? I mean, as a City Council member? 00:36:00
You know, we would look at these massive. 00:36:03
Logs but. 00:36:05
Could you maybe report a little about about? 00:36:07
The inability just because of records to even understand. 00:36:10
How many miles? And because we're just not. 00:36:13
Keeping logs of. 00:36:15
Right to my understanding like for the again the vehicles, the mileage logs is that. 00:36:17
The miles was checked on an annual basis. 00:36:22
There's a lot that can happen in a year. 00:36:24
Only. 00:36:27
Each vehicle. 00:36:28
Once a year. 00:36:30
Of like total miles. 00:36:31
Right and the. 00:36:33
The card The fuel cards were assigned to the vehicles. 00:36:35
Which can be, I mean, there's positive negatives to both, but it's like. 00:36:39
Well, who has access to the vehicle? How do you know who's doing the filling up? 00:36:43
How do you know that? 00:36:48
When this guy or gal. 00:36:50
Takes the car to fill it up. 00:36:52
You know that they're not filling up the vehicle and then having. 00:36:54
You know, kid pulling afterwards and filling them up. We have to implement certain controls into the policy to make sure that 00:36:58
those risks are mitigated. And again, it's just a question mark with where it is right now. We, we don't know. 00:37:04
There's stuff that can seem a little off. 00:37:11
But you can't prove it one way or the other one that. 00:37:14
Everything is in check. 00:37:16
There's nothing to worry about. 00:37:18
But you also can't. 00:37:19
You can't. You can't. 00:37:21
Do that because there's no supporting documentation. 00:37:22
But on the other way unless. 00:37:25
Somebody's got a camcorder and can see a. 00:37:26
You know someone with a Vineyard gas card? We didn't find that either, but it raises questions and. 00:37:29
Puts it out into the residents minds for sure. 00:37:34
I'm the thing, and I was just going to talk to Parker is like. 00:37:38
You know, with the citizens concerns coming in, it was also an overall. 00:37:42
Art of like. 00:37:47
What is the policy of how many cars? Who gets them? Department head staff? 00:37:48
And just an overall public awareness of? 00:37:53
Was this included in their compensation? Was this not? 00:37:58
And so I just think as we go through the budget, I don't know, I wanted to talk about this publicly that. 00:38:02
In your budget, who's over fleet and those decisions? Is that the mayor? Is it you and just assigning like. 00:38:08
Because is that part of the deal That is the council? We've got 60 staff. 00:38:16
Members SO. 00:38:20
Our fleet's not very big. I think we could just make that decision collectively, right? But. 00:38:21
Who's putting that together before the budget and. 00:38:26
Presenting that back of. 00:38:29
The amount of cars and. 00:38:30
And who gets a? 00:38:32
Who gets a gas card? 00:38:34
Or what controls are over or wonder controls of those on a? 00:38:36
On a department level basis. 00:38:40
Yeah, You know, serving here for two years, it was just. 00:38:42
Having a policy of that and knowing. 00:38:46
As a. 00:38:49
Legislative and financial body that. 00:38:50
Authorized that it was more of just. 00:38:53
Here's gas and it's like a. 00:38:55
The council had given that to the mayor of Just. 00:38:57
She had over. 00:39:00
Overall, and I would like the council to have yeah authority over that without a blank gas card, right Budgets A limiting factor 00:39:01
on that too. So yeah, you have that control at least we. 00:39:07
Set the budget. 00:39:12
Yeah, we have 25 staff that drive vehicles or whatever. I don't know the exact number, but it's. 00:39:13
All mostly going to be in public works and then directors so. 00:39:18
I think we can. 00:39:21
Handle that pretty efficiently. 00:39:22
Yeah, that's all. 00:39:24
Parker. 00:39:26
Chris, I appreciate you coming tonight. 00:39:27
I would be remiss if I didn't ask some of the questions that I'm going to ask. 00:39:30
For the benefit of the public, I have the. 00:39:33
91 pages of your your findings in front of me. 00:39:37
But I don't think that the majority of residents are. 00:39:41
Reading that as they go to bed at night like I am. 00:39:45
So can I ask? 00:39:49
Could you just explain briefly? 00:39:51
What's the difference between the fact finding work that you've already done? 00:39:52
And the proposal for the next audit versus maybe like a? 00:39:56
Forensic audit or a financial audit in depth? Yeah. So financial audit like is on the city financial statements. 00:40:01
They're looking at and I'm. 00:40:09
Going to be. 00:40:10
Grossly general with this. Like they're verifying bank balances, fund balances. 00:40:13
Like if Vineyard says we have $10,000 in our savings account. 00:40:18
They're gonna write. 00:40:22
A correspondence to the bank and the bank is going to correspond directly with the CPA firm. 00:40:23
And and so at the end of it they can give. 00:40:29
An opinion on your financial statements that. 00:40:32
These. 00:40:35
Funds these accounts. 00:40:36
Are accurately represented that it's not just vineyards word but this outside firm has. 00:40:37
Given their opinion, they have. 00:40:45
Verified. 00:40:48
These balances not through. 00:40:50
Vineyard, but through. 00:40:52
Corresponding like for example with the bank. 00:40:54
A forensic audit. 00:40:58
That's. 00:41:00
A whole nother ball of wax. 00:41:02
You're talking about preparing audit findings. 00:41:04
That will. 00:41:07
Hold up to and stand up in court. 00:41:08
That's going to involve working with. 00:41:11
Attorneys, I mean your work papers have to. 00:41:13
Follow like a chain of custody. 00:41:17
Type Scenario 2. 00:41:19
That those can stand up in court. 00:41:22
The work that I performed was much less in scope. There was number audit opinion given the agreed upon procedure portion. 00:41:25
The smaller report. 00:41:32
Is again just that fact based. 00:41:34
There's no opinions. 00:41:36
Essentially the testing we did. 00:41:38
Is what it? 00:41:40
What it was? 00:41:41
That's the supplemental. The Long report, The supplemental. 00:41:43
Observations and recommendations. 00:41:47
It is again, not an opinion. 00:41:49
But it's. 00:41:52
Exactly what the name says. There are observations that as an accountant, as a. 00:41:54
A CPA or certified internal auditor, Certified fraud examiners. You see stuff as your. 00:41:59
Performing field work. It's that. 00:42:04
This is probably not. 00:42:07
A Best practice the way you're running stuff. 00:42:09
Like cash for example. Cash is one of the ones it. 00:42:13
Wasn't just light on the policy, there just was no policy. 00:42:16
So it's an observation to say hey. 00:42:20
Best practices. You should probably have a cash policy. Here's what should entail. 00:42:23
An observation without having a cash policy, maybe you can't hold people accountable. Maybe. 00:42:28
The lines get blurred when someone takes cash over the counter and makes the deposit. 00:42:34
You know, maybe we're aware of segregation of duties, but. 00:42:39
These other two guys were out sick or this one was on vacation. 00:42:43
The reconciliation at the end of the month needs to get done even though I was making the deposits and taking the cash like. 00:42:46
And we're going to blur those lines. 00:42:52
When you see stuff like that, it's. 00:42:54
An observation and. 00:42:57
You know, here's a recommendation. We would encourage you. 00:42:58
To put. 00:43:01
Specifically, which employees should handle which functions? 00:43:02
And then to make it a policy that. 00:43:05
There's no crossover. Maybe you delegate. 00:43:07
Secondary positions if this one's sick or this one's out, or maybe you just wait. 00:43:10
A couple of days to do a reconciliation, so. 00:43:15
Yeah, they're they're just recommendations. 00:43:19
Management always has the. 00:43:22
Council members or. 00:43:24
In discussion with management, they always have the. 00:43:27
The. 00:43:30
If they want to accept that risk. 00:43:34
Versus to mitigate it. 00:43:36
The auditor. 00:43:38
My position isn't to say. 00:43:40
You know, these are half-to's. These are these are suggestions what will improve the. 00:43:41
I don't know transparency and accountability of the city but. 00:43:47
It's definitely not an opinion. 00:43:50
You could do an audit work that would require an opinion like. 00:43:52
For us up in Salt Lake County. 00:43:56
All of our audits. 00:43:58
Are done in compliance with GAGAS. 00:43:59
But. 00:44:02
Again, it's a. It's a much. 00:44:02
Higher level assurance. 00:44:04
That comes with needing a peer review every three years. 00:44:07
The work that I did here in Vineyard much less. 00:44:10
In. 00:44:13
In scope than that. 00:44:16
An agreed upon procedures. 00:44:17
Hopefully that helps. 00:44:20
Absolutely in the course of. 00:44:21
These types of audits, do you ever come across anything that would maybe trigger you to say, hey, we should pursue A forensic 00:44:23
audit or I should recommend that recommendation? Yeah. 00:44:27
Yeah, we nothing in this audit came up. It was again. 00:44:31
I'll equate it to like. 00:44:38
If I observe someone driving around in a car without a seat belt. 00:44:41
The risk that if something happens. 00:44:45
And you get in an accent you probably. 00:44:48
Your chances of survival. 00:44:51
Go way down if you're not wearing a seat belt. 00:44:53
I saw plenty of instances throughout the city and what I looked at essentially where I observed people not wearing a seat belt as 00:44:57
they were driving car. I'm using a metaphor. It's not the greatest. 00:45:01
But I did not witness any accidents if that helps. Like and and out. 00:45:06
Allegation of fraud. Like I didn't see somebody at the till grabbing a. 00:45:11
Fistful of cash and putting it in their pocket. 00:45:15
But. 00:45:18
Could it have been there? Yes. 00:45:20
Can I prove it? Nope. 00:45:21
So that's important to keep in mind. Again, I go back to that, it's just a question mark. 00:45:23
And if you can't? 00:45:28
Give a reasonable amount of assurance to the public. 00:45:30
To you as the council to Co workers. 00:45:35
Then it it it's just a breeding ground for a. 00:45:39
An environment that. 00:45:42
Doesn't have good controls and doesn't breed a lot of. 00:45:43
Trust in government, and that's what we're trying to fix. Sorry. 00:45:47
For the benefit of the residents, what specific benefit does the additional? 00:45:51
Audit into the RDA. Provide the city as a whole. 00:45:56
Where we left it off last year was kind of just. 00:46:01
Scratching the surface to say. 00:46:05
Like the billing packages. 00:46:08
That I call them. 00:46:11
A check that the RDA. 00:46:13
Wrote out to the contractor who's performing the work. 00:46:15
To say, here's the kind of documentation. 00:46:19
And supporting documents we do have. 00:46:21
Let me give you an example. 00:46:26
One of the subcontractors. 00:46:28
That is in charge of hauling away. 00:46:30
Like concrete? 00:46:34
For example. 00:46:35
They would submit. 00:46:36
Bills. 00:46:39
Through the. 00:46:40
I'm going to call them the prime contractor. I might not be using the right lingo through Anderson Geneva saying we hauled away 00:46:42
10,000 lbs of of concrete. 00:46:46
Well, that's a cost to Anderson Geneva that they pass on through to the RDA. 00:46:51
And. 00:46:55
That might be a line item and. 00:46:56
From their subcontractor to Anderson Geneva that then builds the RDA. 00:46:58
But as I go in and look. 00:47:03
Something that I would look for that would substantiate that would be like a scale. 00:47:05
Take it to way in and way out when I drop a. 00:47:10
Down in South Jordan where I live when I go to the Transjordan landfill. 00:47:13
I pull my trailer on. 00:47:18
They give me a ticket saying I'm about. 00:47:19
I don't know, 12,500 lbs. 00:47:22
Dump my trash and I come out and I'm £10,000. That's that's somebody. 00:47:24
Who's a third party? 00:47:29
Saying. 00:47:31
You dumped 2500 lbs of stuff here. There were no scale tickets. 00:47:31
For an example. 00:47:36
So the contractor could have put. 00:47:37
And again, I'm just using an example. They could have put 10,000 on the bill. They could have put 15,000. I'm saying that in the 00:47:40
packet that I have. 00:47:44
There was stuff that. 00:47:48
Was missing. 00:47:50
Sometimes the packets didn't have. 00:47:51
Any invoices? It was just an e-mail. 00:47:54
Listing out some. 00:47:57
Services or remediation that was performed and an amount. 00:48:00
And in those cases, I just said, look, there was no invoices. It was literally just an e-mail with numbers. 00:48:04
And how do we substantiate that? 00:48:10
This second goal. 00:48:12
Is going to be again. 00:48:14
We budgeted about 300 hours. That's almost the entire. 00:48:16
Hours that were budgeted for that first endeavor. 00:48:21
Just focusing on the RDA. 00:48:24
There it won't be. 00:48:26
At the end of this, well, it's a question mark. 00:48:28
We'll have spent significant time. 00:48:31
Interviewing not just Anderson, Geneva, but other folks here in the city. 00:48:33
Possibly subcontractors and that's The thing is we're going to have to work that out. 00:48:38
With the folks doing the remediation. 00:48:43
I mean. 00:48:46
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but they. 00:48:48
That I have no ability to. 00:48:50
Compel them to let me into their facilities to open up their books and records. 00:48:53
So there might be. 00:48:57
A little bit of negotiation there. 00:48:59
But by the end of it, the hope is that. 00:49:01
How it will benefit the residents is we'll have some. 00:49:04
A better understanding of what support is there. 00:49:07
For them. 00:49:12
Understood. That helps to answer that absolutely. One of the concerns of the City Council right now is making sure that we are 00:49:14
trimming the budget and and not spending excessively. 00:49:19
And in the scope of work that you've provided, we're looking at, you know, $100,000 bill that the taxpayers have to foot. 00:49:24
In your professional opinion, do you suspect that we see a return on the investment as far as as we implement best practices that 00:49:31
mitigates some of the spending and losses? Yeah. 00:49:36
So the return on investment? 00:49:43
I'm going to say for sure there will be a return on investment, but it is. 00:49:45
It is hard to. 00:49:49
Observe. 00:49:52
In that. 00:49:54
When where you're going from not having any policy? 00:49:55
Like for cash handling or how you're going to manage your fleet again, there was. 00:49:59
A brief. 00:50:04
Policy on fleet. 00:50:05
To going to a robust policy. 00:50:06
Where you have checks and balances. 00:50:09
And and. 00:50:12
And you have that program or? 00:50:13
Whatever lockdown. 00:50:16
There is a return on investment there. 00:50:19
But it doesn't. It's hard to calculate that dollar amount. 00:50:22
It's a lot easier. My I spent 16 years on the federal government auditing defense contracts. That was really easy because we'd go 00:50:26
in there and find where. 00:50:31
Maybe a defense contractor had overbuild the government that you know, proverbial $300.00 for a hammer and. 00:50:36
We saw it at Kmart for 25 bucks. 00:50:42
We could go in and question those costs. 00:50:45
Than our administrative contracting officer would go and negotiate with the. 00:50:48
Contractor and they'd get some money back and we could say yeah. 00:50:53
That's tied right to our findings. It's a little bit more difficult with this, but. 00:50:57
Yeah, there's definitely return on investment just. 00:51:03
Hard to calculate. 00:51:05
But if you're in business and you know. 00:51:08
The importance of good policies and procedures. 00:51:10
Like this is a necessary thing you have to do. 00:51:15
Understood. 00:51:18
In your opinion? 00:51:19
And based on the the findings that you've already had. 00:51:20
Where do you think is the highest priority that the Council should be focused on right now? Is it the P cards? Is it the travel? 00:51:23
So out of all the areas. 00:51:34
The RDA is by far the biggest dollar amount and probably the biggest question mark from from those. 00:51:37
Other 6 areas. 00:51:43
I would say. 00:51:45
Probably. 00:51:47
It's probably a toss up between. 00:51:48
Vehicle travel and the P card. The P card has probably the most transactions. 00:51:51
I mean, but some of them are very. 00:51:57
Very small. 00:51:59
Couple of bucks. 00:52:00
Eating out or buying? 00:52:02
Things for events the city's holding, but some of them will, you know. 00:52:05
Pretty large. A drone show. 00:52:08
You know, for $20,000. 00:52:10
That's yeah, yeah. 00:52:13
Significant. 00:52:15
That's all my questions, only questions. 00:52:16
I have a just a follow up. Does your? 00:52:19
Your firm provide any. 00:52:21
Of those kind of ROA services or ROI services. 00:52:23
On uh. 00:52:27
Stuff like that. Would you be able to like for example? 00:52:29
Run that cost benefit analysis as you go through and help implement some of these policies and kind of give us an estimate at 00:52:31
least of yeah, here's how much. 00:52:35
Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, yeah. 00:52:39
That's basically. Here's how much. 00:52:41
Was. 00:52:43
You know a part of this policy. Here's how much it's under the influence of this policy. 00:52:44
Yeah. As far as like a dollar amount, what we've seen change based on the policy implementation or stuff like that? 00:52:49
Yeah, well, that's a good point you could probably see. 00:52:54
You know. 00:52:58
If it is much more defined. 00:52:59
On what can go? 00:53:02
On AP card and what's appropriate? 00:53:03
And maybe like with the food. 00:53:06
When it's appropriate to. 00:53:08
Have food brought in for a meeting. 00:53:11
You could definitely do some analysis and say here's what we were spending. 00:53:14
You know, on a yearly basis before we had these policies. Here's what we're spending now. 00:53:18
But again, that's not going to happen right at the end of the audit. It'll probably take a year or two. 00:53:23
To be able to do some sort of analysis, but yeah. 00:53:28
We could do an analysis like that. We could look at and tell you. 00:53:31
Per section, how much? 00:53:35
The city spending on an annual basis in those areas right now. 00:53:37
If that would help. 00:53:41
Yeah, just as you go through the policy having some sort of. 00:53:43
Like estimated projection I think could be really helpful and. 00:53:46
Kind of help us know where we should. 00:53:48
Start our focus as we I mean. 00:53:50
It's a lot to focus on in the course of a year and we might as well. 00:53:52
Get the lowest hanging fruit first. 00:53:55
And I noticed you said that the RDA was by far the biggest. 00:53:57
Threat or question mark where you called it? 00:54:02
For dollar amount. 00:54:06
For sure. Yeah, we're talking. 00:54:08
10s of millions of dollars there versus. 00:54:11
So that would be the highest priority in your opinion? 00:54:15
Yeah. And I think that's a good structure we talked about this last time. 00:54:18
How you presented it. 00:54:22
Because I mean. 00:54:24
Comparing. 00:54:25
The policies to the RDA, like the RDA, is really its own. 00:54:26
Its own separate thing and so I think. 00:54:29
I mean, I like. 00:54:31
What you displayed in your presentation? How that would be? 00:54:32
Just to focus all on its own. 00:54:36
As well. 00:54:38
So I I have one more question so. 00:54:39
Because our policy doesn't state that these trucks need to be. 00:54:47
Weighed in. 00:54:50
Or the invoices have to be. 00:54:53
Given and we got the claim last year that. 00:54:56
Trucks were going. 00:55:01
We were paying for. 00:55:03
A year and trucks weren't moving yet invoices are being paid. We don't know if that claims true or not true. 00:55:06
But that claim has come in and that's I think it's important that citizens understand that. 00:55:12
If we have no policy in place to require any of that. 00:55:17
Right. 00:55:21
You're talking million, I mean. 00:55:22
If you're saying 10s of millions. 00:55:24
Is it fraud that if there's no. 00:55:26
Policy, Yeah. 00:55:29
Yeah, not to my knowledge. And again, I'm not an attorney. 00:55:33
When you're talking about fraud that's proved in a court of law, I mean that involves like. 00:55:37
Somebody's intent. 00:55:41
Again. 00:55:44
Regardless of what we find. 00:55:47
No city policy was broken again because. 00:55:49
Because there is no remember, Holdaway said. But that's why I say like return on investment, it's like. 00:55:51
If we don't have any of those policies and we can't go in and look at, I think that's why his work is so important is because. 00:55:56
Sitting down with each one and understanding it and having. 00:56:03
An independent outside. 00:56:07
From the RDA of going OK. 00:56:09
Here's a specialist. 00:56:11
We're running. 00:56:13
What I believe is the largest RDA in the state of Utah. 00:56:14
Out of small little vineyard. Big. 00:56:17
And I think the results of your first audit prove that. 00:56:19
Maybe we're not capable, and that's OK. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just admit. 00:56:23
Your abilities to do so, and I think citizens should understand that that this is. 00:56:28
It's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength to say. 00:56:33
Look, we've got to stop what we're doing and put the literal shovel down on cleanup. 00:56:37
We have, I mean, because we. 00:56:42
I don't know that we're saying that. I think we're saying that we're trying to be responsible here. Be responsible, Yeah. And look 00:56:44
at it and say what we're trying to trying to rectify. Deficiencies have gone in the past of where they're at. We expect to find 00:56:49
evidence of fraud, but we want to make sure that we're set up so that we could if we needed to. 00:56:55
Yeah, yeah. 00:57:00
Correct. Yeah, that's better, better put and I would say with with the RDA again. So this is. 00:57:01
Not anything. 00:57:08
That I'm proving this is Chris Harding's take on the situation, and you see this a lot in not just city governments, but county 00:57:09
and federal. 00:57:13
State. 00:57:17
Where? 00:57:19
You get people that come in. 00:57:19
And well, this is how my predecessor did it. This is how I was trained. 00:57:21
What I'm talking about here is like when. 00:57:27
A bill was submitted for reimbursement to the RDA. 00:57:29
The support that I saw. 00:57:34
In these. 00:57:36
Packets. 00:57:37
Like the RDA would have an e-mail and they're saying. 00:57:38
Hey, this this bill's OK to pay. 00:57:41
In some instances you could see where. 00:57:44
The finance director had done some math checks. Sometimes she was like, oh, on this one, we're only paying like. 00:57:46
75% of the bill. And so you could, you could tell some cursory things were done, but it was like. 00:57:53
Did they have a? 00:57:59
A set of. 00:58:00
Criteria that they were looking for? How did they test invoices? 00:58:02
And it seemed like a lot of the times they weren't so when you step back and look at it. 00:58:06
It's again, it's not. 00:58:11
That they were. 00:58:12
Not following policy because there was none, but it was probably stuff they had learned to do stuff from. 00:58:13
Their predecessors? 00:58:19
And so when you step back. 00:58:20
We were we. 00:58:23
The city as they approve these bills. 00:58:24
For reimbursement. 00:58:27
For the work going on in the RDA. 00:58:28
It was. 00:58:30
A whole lot of trust. 00:58:32
I'm you know, surely the the people doing the work know what they do are doing. 00:58:33
And that, you know, these bills are accurate and correct, we're going to reimburse them. 00:58:38
But when push comes to shove, there wasn't a lot of supporting documentation to show that. 00:58:45
Folks from the city were doing. 00:58:49
Kind of what I would call. 00:58:51
Their due diligence, I know that's a legal term and I'm not a lawyer, but I'm going to use it. Yeah, we were doing our due 00:58:52
diligence to protect ourselves and. 00:58:56
Make sure that these bills were accurate. I mean at the very least like. 00:59:01
Are we making sure that some. 00:59:05
That this list of numbers wasn't. 00:59:07
Fat fingered in an area you know. 00:59:09
Was there a? 00:59:12
A receipt from A10 key showing that. 00:59:13
Someone had verified all the numbers just mathematically. 00:59:15
No, there wasn't. So we're relying on everything from math to supports. Well, I just want to end with. That's why I think it's 00:59:18
important to set the table that even if you do go and find that because of the lack of policies. 00:59:24
I mean. 00:59:30
You know, citizens. 00:59:31
Elected us, but elected me. 00:59:34
Two years ago to go in and they asked these hard questions. 00:59:35
And I know we pushed for a year politically to get you. 00:59:39
To be able to do that first one. 00:59:43
But I also wanted to lay expectations for citizens that even. 00:59:45
At the end of the day, one of the hardest things. 00:59:49
Like 6 months ago. 00:59:52
In finding out that there were. 00:59:53
No policies in place. It was. 00:59:55
We're in a much world of hurt because if there were policies back, OK, great. 00:59:58
Hey, they're being broken and. 01:00:02
You know. 01:00:04
Fraud occurs or something you can hold them to accountable. It's actually much worse than that. It's. 01:00:05
In my opinion, because it's. 01:00:09
There has been. 01:00:11
From the beginning. 01:00:12
There has been no policies in place with a multi $1,000,000. 01:00:14
And we're talking. 01:00:18
Hundreds of millions of dollars. 01:00:20
And I think we need to state this on the record. 01:00:22
This is 10s of millions of dollars from Alpine School District. 01:00:26
This is. 01:00:29
Millions of dollars from. 01:00:31
Utah County. 01:00:34
This is just not our money. 01:00:35
That we have been stewards over. 01:00:38
With no policies. 01:00:41
And so even if you come back. 01:00:43
And say hey this is. 01:00:45
The ability for those taxpayers? 01:00:48
Of Alpine School District. 01:00:51
It were. 01:00:53
So the $100,000 to put those policies in place? 01:00:54
It's a no brainer you you can't just continue to do a. 01:00:59
$100 million project because. 01:01:03
You know, some of the documents that we're finding are. 01:01:05
Are committing 900 million to this effort. 01:01:07
You know whether we know if it was extended the right way from 300 to 900. 01:01:10
And if that was extended the correct way. 01:01:16
We've got to ascertain that to get to its. 01:01:19
And so. 01:01:24
Yeah, this is a big. 01:01:26
Thing. Can I add something? You mentioned forensic audits. 01:01:28
I think. 01:01:33
It might be helpful to to kind of dive into this distinction a little bit. 01:01:34
And maybe even consider. 01:01:38
Doing a forensic audit, I mean if like. 01:01:40
Like your goal, your firm is to. 01:01:42
Help us move forward. 01:01:46
In the best way, right? 01:01:47
If we want to go through and kind of evaluate how? 01:01:49
Did the things of the past line up with state code? 01:01:52
How did the things of the past line up with all these? 01:01:55
I mean, we're subject to. 01:01:57
All the governmental policies. 01:01:58
From the state regard, regardless of whether we have our own city policies on top of those. 01:02:00
There's still a number of mechanisms that government agencies have to follow. We still submit our finance records to. 01:02:05
An independent CPA firm and still get those opinions and we submit our data to the state auditor's website as well, which will. 01:02:11
We'll hear more about coming forward. 01:02:18
Do we want to have a forensic audit? 01:02:22
Of the history of the RDA and see if we can find a firm that can do that. 01:02:24
And really dive into. 01:02:28
Hey, here's. 01:02:30
Here's the history, if we want to say. 01:02:31
Like I don't, I don't want this to just be like an open question of. 01:02:33
Hey, maybe there's fraud, maybe there's not fraud. Like, let's just go find. 01:02:37
Whatever it is we're looking for and actually do that deep dive because there's. 01:02:40
Firms that are available to do that. 01:02:43
I don't think yours is one of them and won't do it for this price point of course, but. 01:02:45
Why not just like? 01:02:49
Would you, would you guys want to go through that effort and. 01:02:52
Try to find a firm that could do that. 01:02:55
I think the. 01:02:59
Kind of where I'm at with it. 01:03:00
That's a great. 01:03:02
Question, Ezra. 01:03:02
Having. 01:03:05
Seen forensic audits happen? It's. 01:03:06
I think that there's definitely. 01:03:11
The intent of the kind of word, the end goal of where we need to get. 01:03:12
Is a community. 01:03:17
And is a city. 01:03:18
Is we've got to restore our residents trust. 01:03:19
In our government. 01:03:22
And it's been. 01:03:24
Clear to me. 01:03:26
Especially over the last little bit is I've. 01:03:28
Looked into and been in the mayor's seat that. 01:03:29
There's some deficiencies. 01:03:33
And I think I like what you said earlier. 01:03:35
You were talking about. 01:03:37
You know these problems didn't happen overnight. 01:03:38
Right. And it's not. 01:03:41
Realistic to try to fix them. 01:03:43
Overnight. 01:03:45
So I think that. 01:03:46
To Councilman Nair's point. 01:03:47
Should we go deeper? 01:03:49
I think that that. 01:03:51
Is a. 01:03:52
Good question. 01:03:53
I I. 01:03:56
Kind of where I. 01:03:57
Think I. 01:03:58
Where Chris will. 01:04:01
Definitely help us and be a benefit to the. 01:04:03
Effort of rebuilding trust. 01:04:06
Is helping us to. 01:04:08
Start looking into this and see if there's. 01:04:10
A bigger, more deeper issues that we need to dig into. 01:04:14
Because I think that. 01:04:17
A lot of it too. It's there. There are many mechanisms of government to. 01:04:19
Oversee and stuff like that, but. 01:04:23
Where the specific where I like where this? 01:04:26
Proposal wise is looking. 01:04:29
The next layer down, the second tier subcontractor. 01:04:31
And making sure that that. 01:04:36
All matches up and we can have some certainty that. 01:04:37
Those services were provided. 01:04:42
And the taxpayers are receiving that benefit. 01:04:44
So I don't know if I have an answer. 01:04:48
Or. 01:04:52
Can I ask direction, oh Mayor? 01:04:53
Yeah. So can I ask a question, Mr. Hardin? Sure, please. So. 01:04:54
The proposed. 01:04:58
Your proposed audit would be doing for the idea right now this this. 01:05:00
Would, would at the completion of this, would there be a better indication of whether it would be appropriate to do a forensic 01:05:03
audit or would I think and we'd definitely be in a better position and and. 01:05:09
I'll put it this way, if there was a forensic auditor in the room, I. 01:05:15
I'd say let's. 01:05:18
Ask his opinion on this, I don't know is there? 01:05:20
Here here's my take on it is. 01:05:23
If you got a forensic auditor, a lot of the. 01:05:26
Preliminary work they would do is the same work. 01:05:28
I'm proposing right here. 01:05:31
Going in. 01:05:32
Looking to try and. 01:05:34
Substantiate some of these costs. See what? 01:05:36
Supporting documentation is there whether it's invoice or scales or seeing what work has been completed, looking at agreements. 01:05:39
That preliminary work they're going to do. 01:05:46
Anyways, until they come upon stuff that. 01:05:48
OK. Can we start building a case that would go to court? 01:05:51
So I would say. 01:05:56
The work. 01:06:01
I'm planning to do would go along with that. 01:06:03
If you got a forensic auditor, they'd probably be doing a lot of this stuff anyways. 01:06:06
With the anticipation. 01:06:11
We need to find something. 01:06:13
Before we can start doing the forensic. 01:06:16
Auditing. Uh, uh. 01:06:18
Part of this job. 01:06:19
And so this audit would lead us to. 01:06:21
To understand if we needed to or not. 01:06:24
As well, Yeah. 01:06:26
I think so. 01:06:27
Definitely OK. 01:06:28
I wanted to make one more or you're next. 01:06:31
Councilman Nair I think is smart to not take it off the table but. 01:06:36
I think it's premature to like. 01:06:40
Where in. 01:06:42
The people that have approached us with the claims, I think we've turned them over and. 01:06:45
Talked about those. 01:06:50
I have no problem if we need to have the citizens go through those claims, but until they're. 01:06:52
Warranted or theirs? 01:06:57
You know, the smoke turns into more. 01:06:58
I but what? 01:07:02
What I would say, and I think citizens need to understand, or maybe our community could. 01:07:04
Could do better. 01:07:09
Is. 01:07:11
The most money in our cities, not in our city. It's an RDA. Like our RDA is a huge, massive entity. 01:07:12
And I'm concerned about the. 01:07:18
Lack of knowledge and. 01:07:22
The the from our citizens to wrap their heads, their hands around. 01:07:24
Just how big this is and how concept? 01:07:30
Sequential it is. 01:07:33
And even to get to this point, like what a victory it was to. 01:07:34
You know, because now we've uncovered and today it's like. 01:07:40
There's no policies on $100 million. Like there's not the right policy, you know? 01:07:44
But it took us a lot to get to be able to even to admit this and. 01:07:48
Today's meeting, like, you know what I mean? It's like. 01:07:53
And how much argument that that had? And I think the other thing that in sitting and learning down is like. 01:07:56
And I mean this not nothing against you, Zach, but. 01:08:02
We can't have the mayor or just our mayor. 01:08:06
Over hundreds of millions of dollars and like what are those safeguards even those act we we think you're an honest person. 01:08:09
And even the council I'm concerned about, just as us as an RDA direct an RDA board. 01:08:16
The. 01:08:23
Few citizens that come to this meeting to understand it. 01:08:24
I'm extremely concerned about. 01:08:27
The taxpayers of Alpine School District, that they had no idea that this how this is operating. We don't notice them. 01:08:30
This is their money that has been. 01:08:37
You know, the way it's been managed. 01:08:40
I don't even know if we're even telling them. 01:08:43
You know how how that is? 01:08:45
The way it was extended. 01:08:47
From. 01:08:49
300 to 900 How? 01:08:50
For notifications even sent out that we're going to take an additional 600 million to them. 01:08:52
I would be ******. 01:08:57
You know, in looking through the document, the lack of documentation that's there. 01:08:59
And these things sound so foolish to say. 01:09:03
Because I remember when we started to say it in Carsten Walker and others started to say. 01:09:07
I'm not seeing any, you know, documentation of that and so. 01:09:11
I think this is the right path. But the second thing I wanted to add is you keep saying like there's a financial component, 01:09:15
there's a financial component. 01:09:19
And I don't know if. 01:09:22
Today's meeting is. 01:09:24
Is this? 01:09:25
Telling citizens that there's a legal component to it. 01:09:26
But also there's a. 01:09:29
There's a not a political, but like a. 01:09:31
I don't know how to describe it, but a. 01:09:35
Process or a decision? 01:09:37
And I just want to explain this. 01:09:39
If you go years ago when the RDA was created. 01:09:42
OK, or when most Rdas are created? 01:09:45
Mayor, have a point of order. 01:09:47
So, Councilman Holdaway, I know you want to go over the history of this. Well, I just want to describe it. I know you want to. 01:09:50
But I'm gonna say, wouldn't that be a better time? 01:09:55
And how it go over the governance of the RDA, well, I'll just wrap this. Our issue right now is to take care of this aspect. 01:09:58
There's lots more time and many more things to be done with the RDA and maybe this would be better addressed then. 01:10:04
Is that OK? Yeah, that's fine. I'll wrap up in 30 seconds. 01:10:10
What I'll just say is. 01:10:14
And thanks. 01:10:15
Usually when you're talking about such a large sum of money. 01:10:18
Texas Instruments. 01:10:23
Facebook. 01:10:25
Or some big thing for the community? 01:10:26
When the original RDA was created, it was we're cleaning up Geneva still for 300 million. 01:10:29
Out of the blue, it expands to we're going from 300 to 900. 01:10:35
If you ask the average citizen, they don't know that that happened a year or two years ago. 01:10:40
So how can we as an RDA board? 01:10:45
Have that power and authority to go that big. 01:10:48
When yes, you're authorized or if documents happen. 01:10:51
But how do citizens not known? So I think. 01:10:55
There's a, there's a legal component, but then there's also a. We need to be very public. 01:10:57
When this comes back to help citizens. 01:11:02
Just knowledge and education of it because what are they getting back for it? Like what? 01:11:06
What are the public interests in? 01:11:11
In the RDA. 01:11:14
Because that's not even defined. 01:11:16
Like the things that you see like a swimming pool and just other things. So I just wanted to end with that is like, I think that's 01:11:18
it. I want the RDA board to consider awesome. Didn't I think go in 2011. 01:11:24
The what? The cap? 01:11:29
That $300 million cap? 01:11:31
I think that's 2011 when there was like. 01:11:33
200 residents here so. 01:11:36
I was before my time, so I wasn't able to be outraged at the time, but it is a good point. We need to. 01:11:38
Pay more attention. So thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I think one. Yeah, please go ahead. 01:11:43
Along with looking. 01:11:49
Backwards historically at what has happened. I think it's also important to say the work, I would say. 01:11:50
Just as important, the work that we're going to do is looking forward about setting up those policies. 01:11:57
Training whoever's going to be over the RDA and the Billings. 01:12:02
The steps they're going to do when a billing comes in, they're not just going to. 01:12:06
Prove it like. 01:12:09
What steps are they going to do? What are they going to be required to look at? 01:12:10
So that going forward. 01:12:15
You don't have to have these questions. 01:12:17
You have verified it. So thank you. Thank you. 01:12:19
Chris, sure. Appreciate your time. We will take your proposal into consideration and. 01:12:23
Be in contact with you we. 01:12:28
We really do appreciate that. 01:12:30
Just real quick on the proposal consideration. 01:12:32
Do we still have quotes from the other? I noticed the estimate of 40,000. 01:12:35
Falls into our necessity for three quotes. Do we know if any of the other quotes? 01:12:40
Were forensic auditors for this? 01:12:43
Do you guys maybe staff? 01:12:49
David Kyle, do you know? 01:12:51
You mean like did we get a second or third quote as opposed to? 01:12:55
Yeah, for the just because it's. 01:12:59
The estimates Forty $40,000 and. 01:13:00
And the same. Go ahead and the same. 01:13:03
Yeah, the scene was so yeah, I was. I was. 01:13:05
Around when we put out for a bit, so when we put it out for an RFP or RFP. 01:13:09
Last year we received one. 01:13:15
Bed who is? 01:13:17
Mr. Harding. 01:13:19
I'll not. So when we review that, we reviewed it to ensure that was fair and fair and reasonable pricing. 01:13:20
OK. Oh, OK. Got it. 01:13:26
Thank you, Sir. 01:13:29
All righty, we're going to jump into the next item on the agenda here. 01:13:30
We have the state auditor's office going to present. 01:13:34
Go over question and answer. 01:13:37
Like to invite. 01:13:38
Seth on up here and. 01:13:40
Introduce yourself if you could, and. 01:13:42
Thank you. Good having you here. 01:13:45
So my name is Seth Elvis and I'm the. 01:13:46
Manager for the Local Government Division of the State Auditor's Office and Kim Beck is here with me. 01:13:49
She works in the Special Projects division. 01:13:54
When we have. 01:13:57
They run the hotline. 01:13:59
For the state. 01:14:00
Where citizens can submit complaints if they have concerns or complaints. 01:14:02
That goes through them sometimes. If they're regarding a city, then there's some overlap between special projects and local 01:14:06
government because we work with mostly local governments. 01:14:10
And special projects come from that one, so. 01:14:14
In being asked to come and speak to you guys today, there were there were several questions that came both from. 01:14:19
From the special project side and the local government side. 01:14:25
That, uh. 01:14:28
I wanted to. 01:14:29
To go through and just. 01:14:30
Is cover some of them. 01:14:31
And then if you have any questions, you're welcome to. 01:14:33
To fire him away. 01:14:35
I reserve the right to say I'm not sure and we'll get back with you if that needs to happen though, so. 01:14:37
One of the one of the concerns that. 01:14:43
That came to our office. 01:14:45
With respect to Vineyard City. 01:14:47
Was regarding grandma. 01:14:49
The grammar process, how it happens? 01:14:52
Prior to my experience with. 01:14:55
With the state I was a grandma officer for a county. 01:14:57
And and there's. 01:15:00
There's different ways that different people can do it, and there are there's. 01:15:02
There's different grandma officers from different entities. 01:15:05
Will handle requests in different ways. 01:15:09
One of the key concerns should be consistency across how an entity. 01:15:11
Will handle those requests. 01:15:16
And and one of the things that should be consistent is the. 01:15:19
That governing body members do not need to make a grammar request to obtain information. 01:15:22
From the entity that they are. 01:15:27
Tasked with governance over. 01:15:29
So if I am a City Council member. 01:15:31
I should be able to go to. 01:15:33
My city. 01:15:35
Staff. 01:15:36
And request information. 01:15:37
They should provide that to me. 01:15:38
It's inherent in my job to. 01:15:40
To do that. 01:15:42
That that information has to be provided. 01:15:43
Another question that comes up. 01:15:47
Regularly with grandma and cities or counties. 01:15:49
Is. 01:15:52
How long do we need to keep these things? How long do we need to keep emails? How long do we need to keep? 01:15:53
Text messages on our phones. 01:15:58
If you're like me. 01:16:00
I was at a sporting event for one of my kids and my phone said I ran out of memory so I could had to stop videoing and. 01:16:02
And it was all the text messages they. 01:16:08
Had to purge those out. 01:16:10
The question there is really comes to. 01:16:13
The entity's retention schedule. That's one of those policies that you should have. 01:16:15
The state has a statewide retention schedule that you can adopt. 01:16:20
As far as how long you have to keep emails, different things like that. 01:16:24
And there's different types of documents that have different retention schedules. The city would adopt either the. 01:16:28
Standard retention schedule. 01:16:33
Or. 01:16:35
Or adopt their own. If you want to hold something longer, that's fine. 01:16:36
But then that needs to be communicated down through. 01:16:40
I don't like on the state level for us. 01:16:43
DTS at the state they. 01:16:47
They save those things whether I have deleted that e-mail off of my. 01:16:49
Inbox in my folder. 01:16:53
They're saved and backed up at the state level. 01:16:55
So even though I may have deleted it, it still exists. It still is a record and still could still be subject to grandma even 01:16:57
though I have deleted it. 01:17:01
Off of my individual machine. 01:17:05
Or my account. 01:17:07
So. 01:17:09
If you have a retention schedule, you need to communicate with your staff. 01:17:09
It and the different people that are receiving those emails. 01:17:12
On how long they should be kept. 01:17:16
Another question that comes with grandma is protected records. 01:17:20
Truly protected records. 01:17:26
They're protected to keep. 01:17:28
That individual or that situation safe. Sometimes the records are protected because of legal proceedings. 01:17:31
But the governing body mayor. City Council members. 01:17:36
Should have access to. 01:17:40
Those protected records. 01:17:42
I I can think of very limited times. 01:17:45
Maybe if there was a conflict of interest or someone. 01:17:47
Was was suing. 01:17:49
The city or involved in a lawsuit. 01:17:51
Or worked for a company that was involved in that. 01:17:53
They may need to recuse themselves and not have access to a specific record. 01:17:55
The General. 01:17:59
Rule should be. 01:18:00
Council members governing body members for any entity. 01:18:01
Should have access to those protected records. 01:18:04
If you speak to attorneys. 01:18:07
They will have. 01:18:09
They may have concerns over. 01:18:10
Attorney-client privilege. 01:18:13
And yes, the attorney-client privilege can be voided if. 01:18:14
If one council member were to. 01:18:18
To express that could it? 01:18:20
Now it's out in the open. 01:18:23
That discussion would be out in the open. 01:18:24
For the entire entity. 01:18:26
There can be a concern there. 01:18:28
But that is. 01:18:29
That would be handled separately. 01:18:31
As far as being able to access those records. 01:18:33
Access them, yes. 01:18:35
If they're. 01:18:36
If they're. 01:18:38
Should be. 01:18:39
Protected. 01:18:40
That should be disclosed to those council members and said, hey, this record contains this kind of information. 01:18:41
Don't. 01:18:47
Don't put it out. 01:18:48
For general consumption, because there's there's areas of concern. 01:18:49
But as far as keeping it from council members, that should be. 01:18:53
They should have access to that. 01:18:57
Principally, that's because the governing body are elected to govern. 01:19:00
Guide and direct. 01:19:03
The operations of. 01:19:05
Of the entity. 01:19:07
And any limitation in the scope of the information that they receive. 01:19:08
Impedes their. 01:19:12
Their execution of their elected duties. 01:19:13
So one of the concerns that came up over the course of the project that we worked on. 01:19:16
With the city last year. 01:19:22
Were the general Ledger records. 01:19:23
And this. 01:19:27
That actually kind of precedes my time with the state. There was a different. 01:19:29
Person from special projects that worked with Vineyard. 01:19:32
Prior to my coming. 01:19:35
And and working with them. 01:19:36
But. 01:19:38
In some of vineyards records there was a concern about. 01:19:40
Private information or sensitive information that was included in the city's. 01:19:44
Ledger. 01:19:47
For instance. 01:19:48
Examples would be like. 01:19:50
Late charges. 01:19:53
For library books. 01:19:54
So if little Johnny. 01:19:56
Was laid on his library book. Are we gonna say his name? He's a minor. We're gonna charge him. 01:19:58
5 bucks for his late fee or whatever. 01:20:03
Should that really be out there for people to? 01:20:05
To be able to criticize him or whatever. 01:20:08
Or not sufficient fees? 01:20:10
Charges. 01:20:12
For utility bills. 01:20:13
If I put out there. 01:20:14
A Parker's. 01:20:16
Put his name on the thing. Not sufficient funds that one. 01:20:20
If that's out there for people to see. 01:20:24
Would it be detrimental to his character to say his name on that line item? 01:20:26
There are. 01:20:31
Ways that you can adopt that? 01:20:32
All of the utility users have. 01:20:34
Account numbers attached to them too. It would be very easy for the city to make that change and say instead of putting the name 01:20:37
of the. 01:20:40
Of the client. 01:20:44
And not sufficient funds you could put. 01:20:45
Account number. 01:20:47
123-4567 not sufficient fund charge and put that on there. 01:20:48
That would keep those people's names out of the Ledger. 01:20:53
For public consumption. 01:20:57
And remedy that concern. 01:20:59
And that was a recommendation that was made by our office a couple of years ago. Hey, if you have those sort of things in there 01:21:00
when you put in that detailed line item. 01:21:04
Don't include the name. 01:21:08
Include the account number. 01:21:09
And then you don't have to worry about whether or not you need to redact items from that general Ledger. 01:21:10
That's a recommendation we would still hold to. 01:21:16
If you can use an account number. 01:21:20
Or whatever. 01:21:22
Use that. 01:21:23
Instead of it including people's names in those. 01:21:24
There were concerns over maybe you have a rec program. 01:21:27
And you hire. 01:21:30
Youth. 01:21:32
Lifeguards or whatever. 01:21:33
Should their information be out there? 01:21:35
In statute, any employee of a governmental entity, their compensation. 01:21:37
Is going to be posted out on the Transparent Utah website. 01:21:42
That is regardless of whether they are a minor or not. 01:21:45
If you have concerns about that, when you hire someone that is underage, you should also get the signature of their parent that 01:21:49
says, hey, we're going to pay them. 01:21:53
And we're going to make their compensation visible to the public. 01:21:57
And if they have a problem with that. 01:22:00
They should know up front. 01:22:02
And not sign up for it. You won't be able to hire that individual and. 01:22:04
And you'll move on and find somebody else who's willing to have it out there. 01:22:07
When we're dealing with compensation information. 01:22:12
What we consider private. 01:22:15
There's really only one or two cases. 01:22:17
Domestic abuse cases, if they have documented thing from a court that says they're subject to metastatic abuse, we don't publish 01:22:20
those. And undercover policemen, we don't publish their names and their compensation information. 01:22:25
Because it could. 01:22:31
Cause problems. 01:22:32
With. 01:22:34
With the exception of those two cases. 01:22:36
Pretty much everybody else. Compensation information can and should be out on the public. 01:22:38
The transparency website. 01:22:43
Um. 01:22:46
Excuse me, I have. 01:22:51
A little bit of cold, obviously, but. 01:22:52
I'll try not to cough into the microphone. You're fine. 01:22:54
Wanted to walk? 01:22:58
Are actual findings that we we provided to the city. 01:22:59
In looking through those things, we were asked to look at the RDA. 01:23:03
When you're dealing with the RDA, I would. 01:23:06
Would echo. 01:23:08
When you look at Vineyard. 01:23:10
Versus their RDA, the RDA is is bigger and what I would consider higher risk because of the dollars flowing through that. 01:23:12
And, and I applaud the efforts. I've never sat in a in a council meeting that they dedicate an entire hour to. 01:23:19
Audits and controls I'm. 01:23:25
I'm happy and impressed that you're taking the time to do that. 01:23:26
Um. 01:23:30
The first finding that we had when we received complaints was. 01:23:33
Information not included on the Transparent Utah website. 01:23:38
A lot of that information were. 01:23:43
Distributions to. 01:23:45
Developers in the RDA. 01:23:47
Which does not have good optics for the city. 01:23:50
That those would be the. 01:23:54
The specific transactions that were omitted. 01:23:56
We worked with staff. 01:23:59
We didn't find that. 01:24:01
That there was a specific reason that there was intention to leave those out. 01:24:03
However, it still doesn't look good for the city to exclude those kind of payments. 01:24:07
At the end of the year. 01:24:12
We worked with staff. 01:24:15
We made sure that they were aware, hey, these things are missing. 01:24:16
They were prompt. 01:24:19
They made those changes. It's uploaded and available on the public notice website. 01:24:20
On the. 01:24:25
Transparent Utah website. 01:24:26
Today. 01:24:28
The other. 01:24:30
The other. 01:24:30
Finding that we had was. 01:24:31
Was other taxing entity involvement in the RDA? 01:24:33
This is one that was kind of interesting because the city's response at the time came back and said. 01:24:37
But we didn't do it wrong. 01:24:42
And we had to put her kind of a rebuttal on that one saying. 01:24:44
When you created the RDA. 01:24:48
The governing document that was. 01:24:50
Was put in place by, the city said. 01:24:52
You would have an annual meeting of the taxing entities. 01:24:54
There was a statutory change later that said you don't have to do that anymore for this. 01:24:59
Specific RDA type. 01:25:03
Which is fine. 01:25:06
But the. 01:25:07
The RDA was created with the governing document. If they wanted to move to not having that annual meeting, they should have had an 01:25:08
had a meeting and said statute changed. Now we're going to stop having this meeting. 01:25:13
That didn't happen, so our recommendation was resume those annual meetings until the RDA board. 01:25:20
Votes to. 01:25:26
To go with the new statute and stop having those. So we listed that as a finding. The criteria for that finding was. 01:25:27
You didn't follow your own. 01:25:34
Policy. You said you were going to have an annual meeting. 01:25:36
And you stopped doing that without changing that resolution. 01:25:39
So the other one. 01:25:42
Deals with. 01:25:45
Gatsby 77, which requires. 01:25:46
Documentation for. 01:25:49
Tax abatement disclosures. 01:25:51
What happens when you have an RDA and you give money back to a developer? 01:25:53
For a specific reason. 01:25:56
Those are considered. 01:25:58
Whether they are actually pay the tax and then they receive it back on the back end, or whether the tax was actually. 01:26:00
Waived. It doesn't matter the. 01:26:06
It's it's substance over form in the end. 01:26:09
They received money back from a tax. 01:26:12
Tax Fund. 01:26:15
Those disclosures have to be made and they weren't included in the annual financial statements. 01:26:18
So that was another. 01:26:23
Another finding we have. 01:26:24
We also put in a couple of. 01:26:25
Of observations is. 01:26:27
As he mentioned earlier. 01:26:29
We had observations which. 01:26:31
Were not statutory non compliance. 01:26:32
They were observations. The first observation dealt with cities. 01:26:34
Purchasing policy. 01:26:38
At the time, the city's purchasing policy. 01:26:39
Purchases were able to be made by the mayor's office or. 01:26:43
Or heads without council approval. 01:26:45
Up to $125,000. 01:26:48
Which we are office felt was excessive. 01:26:50
The state auditor. 01:26:53
Is a is a constitutional office. 01:26:54
And her. 01:26:56
Her statutory authority is way less than $125,000 so. 01:26:58
And so. 01:27:04
Statute allows you to set your own thresholds. 01:27:08
But uh. 01:27:11
We felt like that was was higher than what it should be. So as you're reviewing your policies. 01:27:11
You can set thresholds for different things. 01:27:18
For instance is you're having that conversation. 01:27:21
Travel, different things like that, you can make your purchasing policy be as detailed as you'd want. So if you want to say hey. 01:27:24
For travel purchases or food purchases, we want a lower threshold. It's totally fine if you want other type of things like you 01:27:30
have a road department and they're. 01:27:35
Maybe they need a higher threshold because they couldn't buy new tires for a truck. 01:27:40
Without. 01:27:43
Crossing $1000 Whatever you can set. 01:27:44
Different thresholds for different departments. 01:27:46
And for different needs. 01:27:49
And then the last one, the last observation was the concerns over Alpine School District. 01:27:51
With the disillusion of. 01:27:56
Of Alpine school districts, splitting into three different school districts. 01:27:57
And how the? 01:28:00
How the situation with the RDA will fit into those? 01:28:02
We felt like. 01:28:06
That is something the city should look into as an RDA board to make sure that there's. 01:28:07
Those agreements are all in place. 01:28:11
And people are notified because it will. 01:28:15
Affect the school district that. 01:28:17
That resumes operations of educating youth. 01:28:19
In this geographic area that includes Vineyard. 01:28:23
They are going to have some unique circumstances. 01:28:26
That those other ones will not have. 01:28:29
And like again, we are not attorneys. 01:28:32
But we can recognize hey, this could be a pitfall. 01:28:35
You should seek legal counsel to make sure that happens. 01:28:38
So those those were our. 01:28:42
From that. 01:28:45
I I know that there was there was at least some concern from. 01:28:48
From citizens on the. 01:28:51
Their response to those audit findings? 01:28:53
Particularly in that case. 01:28:56
How? How should a city? 01:28:58
When you receive findings from. 01:28:59
Either an outside firm or. 01:29:01
Or from your external auditor from our office. 01:29:03
The typical response that should happen when you receive those findings back is you'll have either the entire council. 01:29:05
Or. 01:29:12
A subset of that council, if you have an audit committee that's that's going to receive those separately. 01:29:13
You should receive those. You should. 01:29:17
All of you be able to discuss them. 01:29:19
Understand what the recommendations are. 01:29:21
Come up with your. 01:29:24
Plan for how you're going to do that going forward. 01:29:25
And then you can direct staff or the mayor, whoever, to write the response and make sure that it's it's in line with. 01:29:28
What the governing body has decided. 01:29:34
That's how auto responses should come because. 01:29:38
Those tasked with governance, which is the entire council. 01:29:41
Should be involved with the response for those. 01:29:44
And with that. 01:29:48
I don't want to. 01:29:50
Keep everybody here too late. We'll take any questions you have. The first question I have for you just going off of your last 01:29:51
comment regarding the the response. 01:29:55
Is it the opinion of your office that our response? 01:29:59
Has been sufficient. Would you recommend that we re. 01:30:03
Submit it I. 01:30:06
Or both. Walk us through. 01:30:08
Because that is one concern that I had is I saw the response, there was a. 01:30:11
Some chirpiness. 01:30:16
From the cities side and I just want to make sure that. 01:30:18
Moving forward. 01:30:21
That we. 01:30:22
Are in a good. 01:30:23
Standing in a relationship with the auditors. 01:30:24
Well, is our intent. 01:30:26
Our our office. 01:30:28
Typically you will see. 01:30:30
Findings. 01:30:32
Recommendations the city's response on their planned path forward and that's the end of the report. If you look at that report 01:30:33
from our office, it has. 01:30:36
Findings. Recommendations from the auditor's office. 01:30:40
The city's response to those? 01:30:43
Those recommendations and then there's concluding remarks from our office. The reason why we put concluding remarks were to 01:30:45
clarify. 01:30:49
Some of the response back. 01:30:52
And or perceived kickback from the city saying. 01:30:54
We didn't do this wrong. 01:30:57
And our, our. 01:30:59
Clarification on that was. 01:31:01
We're not saying you didn't follow statute. We're saying you set the resolution to say what you were going to do and then you 01:31:02
didn't do it. 01:31:05
Which is typically what we'd have if an entity didn't follow their own purchasing policy. Who would come in and say? 01:31:09
You have a purchasing policy. You didn't follow it. 01:31:14
You get to set your rules. 01:31:17
But then we expect you to follow those rules, so. 01:31:18
As far as office is concerned. 01:31:21
That project is completed. 01:31:23
We know that there is a transition period, we know that. 01:31:26
That we have new council people in there and we can see that the city is taking steps to try to put different things in place. 01:31:29
So short of us receiving additional complaints through the hotline. 01:31:35
Or makers of like right now. 01:31:41
This the state auditor's office is waiting so that the city can implement those changes that they. 01:31:42
Have working on that. 01:31:47
Not saying we won't come back and look at things again in the future, sure, because we can. And if if we received a. 01:31:49
Vetted complaint. 01:31:54
We would. 01:31:56
But. 01:31:58
Right now. 01:31:59
The city is very much in a transitionary. 01:32:00
Period. And we're going to let you do your job. 01:32:02
Of making those changes as you as the. 01:32:05
The Council sees fit. 01:32:08
And our office can be. 01:32:10
Can be a resource for that. We have a local government Resource Center. 01:32:12
We have some policies and things that are out there for people to be able to use and access. 01:32:15
They will not get you all the way there. 01:32:20
They're meant as templates to help. 01:32:22
Get you 80% of the way and then you'll need to tailor it to your own needs. 01:32:24
But we do have some resources out there. 01:32:28
And our team is there. So if you have questions or concerns. 01:32:30
We can provide training for staff and things as well so. 01:32:34
We do want to be a resource for you as you're going forward, but. 01:32:37
But right now I don't have a planned project to come. 01:32:40
Do another audit, OK. 01:32:43
Awesome. Thank you. Open up the comments and questions from the. 01:32:45
The Council. 01:32:50
Have a very maybe superficial question. 01:32:50
Out of everything you presented. 01:32:54
You mentioned the retention schedule and to my knowledge I don't. 01:32:56
No, I think I've seen one that Vineyard has published. We went through this today. Stephanie sent it. We met with Chris Bramwell. 01:33:00
From the state that helped us look at it. 01:33:09
As we fill the positions within the city, Stephanie is going to work with. 01:33:13
Those that are involved. 01:33:18
In that, and we're going to bring that back to the Council. 01:33:20
OK. You mentioned that the state of Utah has one already, that the city could. 01:33:24
Choose to adopt or fall in on. Do you know what that is off the top of your head? 01:33:29
No, because it'll go through different types of documents and how long you need to hold them. So for instance, invoices have a 01:33:33
certain retention schedule, emails will have a different thing, different things. So they'll they'll go through different document 01:33:36
types. 01:33:40
And what they are, some are permanent. 01:33:44
Minutes from a council meeting or permanent retention schedule. You have to keep them forever, but. 01:33:46
But they will go through those different document types. 01:33:50
From. 01:33:55
I guess. 01:33:58
Once a policy is. 01:33:59
Adopted, like best practice would be, The City Council discusses the policy. 01:34:01
Votes to implement. 01:34:06
Directs the staff. 01:34:08
What's the you mentioned the auditors. We get to set the policy. The auditors job is to. 01:34:09
Make sure that we're beheld to it to our own rules like you you said. 01:34:15
What's the expectation for? 01:34:19
Governing body in that process versus city staff and how does the auditor actually? 01:34:21
Work into that. 01:34:27
Well, the City Council should set the policy. 01:34:29
The mayor should implement the policy. 01:34:33
Through his through the staff. 01:34:36
And then? 01:34:39
Then you'd need. 01:34:40
Part of how you keep your finger on the pulse, so that is through your annual audits, through those different things. When you 01:34:41
have your external auditors come in for the annual audit, they should have an entrance conference with you. 01:34:46
Where the council members or mayor. 01:34:51
Can can express, hey, we have a concern in this area. 01:34:54
And those auditors? 01:34:57
Have to are required by standards to take risk based approach. If you have identified a risk, they should take it. 01:34:58
A closer look at that area. 01:35:05
To provide assurance that that risk has been mitigated. 01:35:07
So you can provide that and you have a little bit of. 01:35:10
Of direction in that one if you wanted them to take a super deep dive into a specific area. 01:35:13
Obviously they'll probably come back and say this was outside of the scope of the original audit. It's going to cost this much 01:35:18
more. 01:35:21
And you have to manage that. 01:35:23
The Council talked a little bit tonight about. 01:35:26
Costs of different things. 01:35:28
City Council. 01:35:31
Governing bodies and City Council members especially. 01:35:32
Have a. 01:35:35
Kind of a tight line to walk. 01:35:37
You're tasked with. 01:35:39
Putting the controls in place to safeguard the public assets. 01:35:41
You also. 01:35:46
Have to be responsible about what you do there. The lock that you put in place shouldn't cost more than what you're trying to 01:35:47
safeguard. 01:35:50
So there's an area of judgment there. 01:35:55
And the public has voted you in place to make that judgment call, so. 01:35:59
It's not, Not necessarily. 01:36:04
Hey, this is I can't give you a black and white. This is what you should and shouldn't do. 01:36:07
Should we expand those procedures or not? 01:36:10
You need to look at that and say, OK, where are we having risks? 01:36:13
We think we want to take your deeper dive. 01:36:16
Great. 01:36:18
Do it. 01:36:19
And then the public will be able to say. 01:36:20
We're proud of you. We'll vote you in for another term or. 01:36:23
Or hey, we want to go a different direction. 01:36:26
That's that's one of the things about the governments that we work with is. 01:36:28
When a community feels like they want a change of direction, they will vote in different people that. 01:36:33
That represent that. 01:36:37
Desire so change, yeah. 01:36:39
Anybody else? I Yeah. 01:36:42
You covered a lot. 01:36:48
And I just want to say. 01:36:49
Thank you to. 01:36:52
To your office and fielding. Over the past two years, I've made countless calls. 01:36:54
I don't know, Seth. 01:36:59
Personally or anything? 01:37:00
But in every single time. 01:37:01
Tina, I think I spoke with her once on the phone, but like. 01:37:03
Having you know. 01:37:07
You guys as a guidance to. 01:37:08
Turn to and know what is state law and I know. 01:37:11
You went through a lot of things. 01:37:14
Just barely and cleared it up and coming here and just. 01:37:16
Verifying everything. 01:37:20
Seth told me all of these things over the course of two years. 01:37:23
And him coming in just. 01:37:27
Repeating what he told us. 01:37:30
I know there were. 01:37:33
A lot of public. 01:37:34
Comments about it not being this way, but tonight it verifies that. 01:37:35
The Council that we got. 01:37:39
In different phone calls verified it so if any citizens have any. 01:37:42
Where we did this today to just say, hey, he's told us and. 01:37:46
I'm really grateful for David Larae being in many phone calls. 01:37:49
You know our previous legal counsel. 01:37:55
Or leadership. 01:37:57
It didn't come out that way over 2 years. 01:38:00
You know, and then without rehashing the past because we are focused. 01:38:03
I'm grateful that when character was. 01:38:08
Questioned that. 01:38:11
Your office continued to stand forth on the policy. 01:38:12
And and support Vineyard City. 01:38:16
In in, you're right, elections have consequences, but. 01:38:20
But we could be folly, and I'm grateful that citizens can call your office and report us. I think citizens should continue. 01:38:25
To call and verify what what we're doing because. 01:38:32
The citizens of Vineyard. This is a victory for the citizens of Vineyard that did. 01:38:36
Make those calls. 01:38:41
There's two things that you did say though. 01:38:43
That are very. 01:38:46
You have a pendulum swinging and one of the things that I learned in your calls. 01:38:48
There's two requirements, one of the notifications of legislation when an RDA changes or extends. 01:38:52
Without I mean. 01:39:01
Citizens or Rdas can go and get into the lobbying world of lobbying to remove notification, but one really obscure. 01:39:02
Legislative pass that. 01:39:10
Was removed from the largest RDA in the state. Was the requirement. 01:39:12
That when there was a change to the RDA that. 01:39:17
Taxpayers within Alpine School District and the board of Alpine School District would not be notified. 01:39:20
We are the. 01:39:26
To my knowledge, we're because of that. 01:39:27
I'm going to call it a backdoor legislation because it's the only RDA that had and. 01:39:30
Even at that time, it wasn't publicly discussed within this RDA board. 01:39:34
That. 01:39:39
That put. 01:39:40
Are I mean, if you could imagine the millions of dollars? 01:39:41
Alpine School District and their 60% or whatever their money would be able to come in and help. 01:39:45
Help us and at least once a year. 01:39:50
Or at least get that and say. 01:39:54
Can we spend more money? And then the second thing is, is the annual meeting? 01:39:57
Stopped. Carson brought that up too. 01:40:01
By not sinking and meeting. 01:40:05
Things could have been found. 01:40:07
But because that was stopped. 01:40:09
And we're like, we're not going to bring in the county, We're not going to bring in the school district. 01:40:11
I think it's really important that the RDA, we have the ability right now saying, hey. 01:40:16
Restart those meetings. 01:40:20
I think that is very important. I think that the more eyes, the more transparency, at least annually, coming in with the. 01:40:23
10s of millions of dollars. 01:40:29
What I don't like is that. 01:40:31
How that was changed so that? 01:40:33
That safe those two safeguards were removed. 01:40:36
Safeguards are there for for a reason. 01:40:39
And so. 01:40:41
Though legally you can. 01:40:42
Go to the legislature and change the law to remove all of those. 01:40:44
It it perks me up and gets me scared. So I think we need to be thinking about that, sure. 01:40:48
So that brings up my question. 01:40:53
Sorry, go ahead, please. 01:40:55
So you mentioned that the. 01:40:56
It was that the TEC, the Tax Entity Committee. 01:40:58
Stopped meeting and the. 01:41:03
The bylaws or the. 01:41:05
Rules require them to meet annually. 01:41:07
And if they wanted to change that, they needed to meet and say, OK, in observance of this new legislation, we'll stop meeting. 01:41:10
So. 01:41:17
If we want to restart that. 01:41:18
How? Whose responsibility is it? Is it the board's responsibility to? 01:41:20
To call a tax entity committee, because my understanding was that that. 01:41:24
That entity met and authorized the board to go forward. 01:41:29
And so I'm not sure how that you know. 01:41:33
You know who does what and so forth. 01:41:35
So. 01:41:39
Yes, the. 01:41:41
The creating resolution for. 01:41:42
For the RDA. 01:41:44
Included the existence of a tax. 01:41:46
Tax Entity committee. 01:41:49
Tech committee is what they call them. 01:41:50
And in that. 01:41:53
Authorizing resolution, it said that they would meet annually. 01:41:54
So to to start that up again. 01:41:58
Really. If that resolution hasn't been superseded with another resolution that says you shouldn't. 01:42:03
Then you you. 01:42:08
Could have and should have been having an annual meeting every year. 01:42:09
To get that going again. 01:42:13
You would reach out to. 01:42:15
The RDA board, which is the City Council just. 01:42:17
Wearing a different hat. 01:42:20
Would say, hey, we're going to have a taxing entity committee meeting. 01:42:21
Do they need to actually take an action? 01:42:26
No, the action was taken already. 01:42:28
And so it would be a. 01:42:31
Purely informational meeting. 01:42:32
But. 01:42:34
You would need to contact each of the participating entities. 01:42:35
Alpine School District, Utah County. 01:42:39
Vineyard City. 01:42:41
All of the different entities that were. 01:42:43
Would be participating or are participating in that? 01:42:44
Contributing tax increment to that and ask those entities who. 01:42:48
Their representative would be which overtime they may or may not. 01:42:51
Even know that they should have a representative that. 01:42:56
And they can designate someone to come. 01:42:58
And have that meeting so that you can meet and. 01:43:01
And be able to provide that information to them. 01:43:04
So in summary, it's incumbent upon our RDA board to initiate contact with each of the entities and call that meeting and bring it 01:43:07
together as opposed to have each of the entities get together and say, OK, we need to meet again. 01:43:14
And then on board, we're going to. 01:43:21
You know we're gonna meet. 01:43:24
You guys might want to come. 01:43:25
When when a city creates an. 01:43:26
You are the. 01:43:29
The host or parent organization that created the RDA. 01:43:30
Therefore, the city's resources, staff, whatever, would be the ones that would be expected to. 01:43:35
To make sure that happens, send out the emails, set the dates at the time, make sure everybody's invited, and make it happen. 01:43:40
Thank you for clarity. Appreciate it very much. I have one more question about your finding I should have. 01:43:47
OK, Alpine School District is. 01:43:52
Dead in what, 6 months or how? I don't know however. 01:43:53
So is it upon us to? 01:43:56
You know, obviously. 01:43:59
The new entity you've got to contact Timpanogos. 01:44:00
And make them aware and bring them. 01:44:03
Because you did not have a finding whether they have to continue. 01:44:06
It's that we have to discuss with them. Are they going to continue in the RDA at that level? 01:44:10
Or our attorneys need to get together and. 01:44:15
And hash that out right like that was your advisement was like, we're not gonna. 01:44:18
We're not going to take it. 01:44:23
Could you describe that so? 01:44:24
Again, our office is not. 01:44:27
I'm not an attorney, right? I'm a pretty good accountant, but not a good attorney, so. 01:44:28
Yes, we recommend that you you get with those. 01:44:33
With that entity. 01:44:36
And make sure that it is. 01:44:37
We did. 01:44:38
Consult with some things and and. 01:44:39
Reading through the. 01:44:41
The statute it there are. 01:44:42
There's parts in the statute that would would lean towards yes, they're going to pick up the obligation that Alpine School 01:44:44
District had. 01:44:47
Us not being attorneys and. 01:44:51
And there's. 01:44:53
Concerns from one side, well will they? And the other side is saying, well it says here that they will. 01:44:54
Which ones right? 01:44:59
I think it would. 01:45:01
It wouldn't be wise to have the city. 01:45:02
Talk to their attorney. Make sure that. 01:45:05
That come up with a legal opinion on what's going to happen there, how it should happen. 01:45:06
And then? 01:45:11
That may be a good item to. 01:45:13
To discuss at that tech committee saying, hey, we know some of the players are changing. 01:45:14
This is how. 01:45:18
What our legal counsel has said is how it will go forward. 01:45:20
Make sure that everybody's on the same page. 01:45:24
Because. 01:45:26
Because whether or not. 01:45:28
The school district receives those money because they come straight to the RDA. 01:45:29
The school district has to recognize. 01:45:32
That revenue as tax revenue. 01:45:35
At the school district level. 01:45:37
And then? 01:45:39
An intergovernmental transfer to the RDA because it's their tax levy. 01:45:40
They have to own the tax levy. 01:45:44
So because it's their tax revenue, they have to recognize it first. 01:45:46
And then put her on their books as a transfer to another governmental entity, which is the RDA. 01:45:50
So. 01:45:54
Even though the money goes straight to the RDA. 01:45:55
They are having a transaction on their books that they have to recognize for that. 01:45:57
And it's. 01:46:01
It behooves the RDA board to make sure that they have that information available to them. 01:46:02
Thank you for that. I just. 01:46:07
Just as an FYI, I have been in contact with the Timpanogos, the new Timpanogos school board. 01:46:10
They recently hired a new Superintendent and they. 01:46:15
Are it's been expressing me they do have concern with how the RDA has been run? 01:46:19
And so we're gonna. 01:46:23
So now that the Superintendent is. 01:46:24
Up and going. We're going to. 01:46:27
Meet with them and kind of make sure that we all feel good about. 01:46:28
How it's doing? 01:46:31
And going. 01:46:33
Just to have that again, that taxing the entity and that oversight. 01:46:34
That was our observation and recommendation is. 01:46:38
Have the conversations get everybody on the same page. Yeah, because. 01:46:40
Where our office would not like to be is. 01:46:45
In a year from now? 01:46:49
Have everything run off the rails and. 01:46:51
And have it being battled out in court. 01:46:53
Yeah, it'd be a waste of public resources for sure. 01:46:55
So very good. 01:46:57
Any other questions for Seth or his office? 01:46:59
I have some. 01:47:04
Yeah, go ahead. 01:47:05
First of all, thank you for. 01:47:06
For your audit, I really appreciate. 01:47:08
The context of. 01:47:11
Of the audit, the professionalism. 01:47:12
Exhibited by your office and providing that the only one question I had about the audit itself. 01:47:15
Was there's a code reference Utah code 173-12? 01:47:21
I couldn't find that. 01:47:26
I was just wondering. 01:47:27
What that code reference was? 01:47:28
It's in the first finding. 01:47:31
17C. 01:47:32
As it potentially referencing. 01:47:33
17312. 01:47:36
And I was wondering if it was potentially referencing a historical code or. 01:47:38
A different one, but it's in finding one the end of the criteria paragraph. 01:47:43
I'd have to pull up the code to make sure that typo. 01:47:47
But I can get back with you on that. That's fine real quick. 01:47:50
Yeah, because I know your office has been contacted 3 or 4 times about this. 01:47:53
The social media. 01:47:57
Council members contact writing and social media. 01:48:00
To the largest Facebook group in the city and. 01:48:03
Citizen asked us a question or. 01:48:06
Were could you talk about that policy of? 01:48:08
If you know is that. 01:48:11
Private meeting or a council like. 01:48:14
So we've got a Facebook of about 6000 people in it. 01:48:17
We comment in there. 01:48:21
So if. 01:48:22
If a. 01:48:23
If a council member is expressing their political views on a. 01:48:24
Private platform or? 01:48:28
Public platform, Facebook, whatever. 01:48:29
That is not. 01:48:32
Stop prohibited. 01:48:35
By code now if. 01:48:36
If. 01:48:37
A couple of you were going back and forth and saying hey. 01:48:39
What about agenda item number 2 tomorrow? Are you going to vote yes? 01:48:43
You you really should. 01:48:46
That would be deliberating a public. 01:48:48
Public policy decision. 01:48:50
On an electronic platform outside of a meeting. 01:48:52
And that would not. 01:48:55
Be wise, I would not do that. 01:48:56
But if you. 01:48:59
You know, hey, I really like this this thing. 01:49:01
Everybody has their own public views and you're. 01:49:04
You're allowed to. 01:49:07
Express those views. 01:49:08
I would just. 01:49:10
I would avoid. 01:49:11
The deliberation back and forth. 01:49:12
Between 2:00. 01:49:15
You know, council members going back and forth. 01:49:16
On those things. 01:49:19
Now 1 can express their views, another one can express their views. 01:49:20
And and you can you can have multiple views expressed on those platforms, but. 01:49:25
Going back and either deliberating or talking about a decision that the board is going to be made should happen in this in this 01:49:29
meeting. 01:49:33
Another platform. 01:49:36
Thank you. 01:49:38
Thank you. 01:49:39
Anybody else? 01:49:41
Oh, can I? Can I keep going? That was. 01:49:42
Yeah, that was just the first question I had. So sorry. 01:49:44
The remainder, just for the public's benefit, could you? 01:49:48
Kind of describe the. 01:49:50
Transparency Utah website and the process of. 01:49:52
Reporting our finances versus the recommendation of. 01:49:55
The year end. 01:49:59
Then we go back and clear in the urine. Can you just explain that process? So statute requires governmental entities to upload 01:50:01
their transactional information to the. 01:50:05
Transparent Utah website. 01:50:09
And that happens quarterly. 01:50:12
So. 01:50:14
Quarter one, you have 30 days after you end of your quarter to get those transactions uploaded. 01:50:15
We do know that. 01:50:20
Entities may make changes. 01:50:21
Maybe you catch something in September or October. 01:50:23
That was a transaction that happened in July which we your first quarter because cities of fiscal year. 01:50:26
And they make that change. 01:50:32
Or you make an adjustment. 01:50:33
A lot of the times you'll see those with adjusting journal entries if the external CPA firm notes that there were transactions 01:50:35
that were coded wrong in your accounting system. 01:50:39
They will propose audit adjustments which are posted. 01:50:44
Sometimes up to six months after the year end because the the entity has 180 days after the year end. 01:50:48
To get their audit. 01:50:54
Completed. 01:50:55
And submitted. 01:50:55
And the, the recommendation there and what we, we've made that recommendation not only to the new city, but to all governmental 01:50:57
entities is. 01:51:01
You make that. 01:51:06
That, uh. 01:51:07
Submission to the Transparent Utah. 01:51:08
Website. 01:51:10
Every quarter. 01:51:11
As required by statute. 01:51:13
Then you will after your audit is complete, you will make another one where you will replace those 4 quarterly files with one 01:51:14
annual file that will contain any audit adjustments or anything else that happened during the year. 01:51:20
After what was originally submitted. 01:51:25
So that. 01:51:27
There's a full and accurate. 01:51:28
Record. 01:51:30
Available for the public. 01:51:31
And that that. 01:51:34
Is one of the biggest things that was missing when we when we submitted before Vineyard had not made an end of year adjustments. 01:51:36
So any of those end of year adjustments. 01:51:39
Didn't make it into the the submission of the Transparent Utah website. 01:51:44
Can I ask a follow up? 01:51:48
Yeah, I need one more to go. 01:51:49
So earlier you mentioned. 01:51:51
That the city should. 01:51:53
Have the general Ledger in such a format manner that it could be provided to a resident at any given time. 01:51:55
That's different than the requirements to. 01:52:02
Upload to Transparent Utah. 01:52:06
Quarterly. 01:52:08
Does the Ledger when requested only need to provide what's on transparent UT or would it? 01:52:09
Also just. 01:52:14
Be the current running Ledger for the months not reported yet. 01:52:15
Well, if a citizen wanted to be on top of it and ask for that. 01:52:20
Prior to the end of the quarter, like hey, we're only one month into quarter one, but I'm interested in what happened that one. 01:52:23
A citizen could request hey I want. 01:52:29
The first months. 01:52:31
And that should be able to be provided by the city, correct? 01:52:33
Correct. 01:52:35
Thank you. 01:52:36
It's a public document. 01:52:37
Sure, I. 01:52:38
I expect, Mayor, that that. 01:52:40
Be applied absolutely definitely lined there. 01:52:42
With that. 01:52:46
Ezra, did you have any more questions you wanted to? Yeah. 01:52:48
Go ahead. 01:52:50
How often do agencies usually have differences between the quarter? 01:52:52
And reports and the. 01:52:57
Annual audited reports. 01:52:59
Regularly. 01:53:03
OK, so. 01:53:04
Most governmental entities in the state don't do a complete close out of their books every month. 01:53:06
Because it's not worth the. 01:53:12
The time and effort would be so for instance. 01:53:15
They don't go every month and say. 01:53:17
What are all of our receivables? 01:53:19
Typically, that's only. 01:53:21
Really important to those entities. 01:53:23
At their year end mark. 01:53:24
Because they want to make sure that they get in the correct reporting year. 01:53:26
If it if it falls between. 01:53:30
You know, month 3 or month 4. 01:53:33
Your accounting staff isn't going to take the time to. 01:53:35
To make sure that those are. 01:53:38
Are perfect or do accruals for receivables or payables at that point in time they're just going to be processing those payables at 01:53:39
year end. They're going to make sure that they fit into the right. 01:53:44
Into the right ear. 01:53:48
So as they go through that process, those kind of adjustments. 01:53:51
Most entities will have some adjustments. 01:53:57
That is something that you can watch. I mean, it's something that. 01:54:00
That when the audit happens. 01:54:02
You can look at that and say, hey, did we have significant audit adjustments because those external auditors will provide those 01:54:04
adjustments to you. 01:54:07
And if you look at that and say whoa. 01:54:11
Why did we have 4 pages of adjustments? 01:54:13
Well, maybe they're small adjustments for payables and stuff like that. 01:54:16
Which would be reasonable. 01:54:20
But if they were large adjustments for other things that were just missed. 01:54:22
Then you could have that conversation, say. 01:54:26
Are we missing these things? Why? 01:54:28
And let's do better next year so we don't miss those. Maybe we need to change our. 01:54:31
Procedures so that we catch those. 01:54:34
And that's one of the things that you can watch and keep your finger on the pulse of it so that. 01:54:37
You do, but most entities do have adjustments, end of year adjustments that need to be. 01:54:41
Included in their financial uploads. 01:54:45
Great. Thank you. 01:54:48
Those urine reports are those reported to the state separately from. 01:54:51
Transparency Utah website as well. 01:54:54
The the financial report, the annual financial audited financial report. Yes, they're available. They can be accessed on 01:54:57
auditor.utah.gov. So transparent.utah.gov has the transactional information. 01:55:02
Auditor, Utah Gov has an option to search auto reports. 01:55:08
And the public can put in. 01:55:11
Any entity name? 01:55:13
And if I pull up those reports for any entity for the different years. 01:55:15
I think we have. 01:55:18
Everything on them out. 01:55:20
At least 10 years back right now that they can look at. 01:55:21
We have other ones that go back further but. 01:55:24
We archive them because mostly people want. 01:55:26
The most recent decade worth of reports. 01:55:28
Thanks. And just two last questions. To your knowledge, was there any discrepancy between? 01:55:31
The annual financial reports that were uploaded to the auditor website versus the ones that later got re uploaded. 01:55:36
Into transparency Utah. 01:55:42
So that as far as. 01:55:45
We looked at the transparent Utah uploads. 01:55:48
I'm not aware of. 01:55:51
An ACT for an annual comprehensive financial report. 01:55:53
Different ones not being uploaded to to the state. 01:55:57
I'd have to look back at the. 01:56:00
Those being submitted if there were changes in that one but. 01:56:03
I think the the. 01:56:06
Because of the time lapse. 01:56:07
And they weren't counted in one quarter, then they weren't followed in the previous quarter. So then there were those gaps. 01:56:09
And it was like, what, 35 million that wasn't be. 01:56:16
Because of the different time lapse. 01:56:19
Or whatever, but but that that was on the Transparent Utah website and he's asking about changes to the annual comprehensive 01:56:20
financial report, which are which are different. 01:56:24
Different documents, so the ones all the transactions and there were missing transactions. 01:56:29
But I'm not aware of. 01:56:33
Of changes to the financial report. 01:56:35
And you mentioned the 35 million? 01:56:38
Sorry so. 01:56:41
One last question after this one. 01:56:42
A lot of the discussion that happened in the aftermath of this audit, and I know this was nothing. 01:56:47
On your audit, to your knowledge was there. 01:56:51
35 million in developer payments that were. 01:56:54
Unreported between. 01:56:58
2022 and 2025 is. 01:57:00
Some may have mentioned in the public. 01:57:02
Yes, those those payments. 01:57:05
Majority of them going out to developer. 01:57:07
Payments were not uploaded to the Transparent Utah website. 01:57:10
And then we went through. 01:57:14
We received the. 01:57:15
The Ledger from the. 01:57:17
From the city. 01:57:19
And we could then compare. 01:57:20
A direct download from the Ledger from the city. 01:57:22
And we compared that to the transparent Utah. 01:57:24
Upload umm. 01:57:26
Afterwards to vet that. 01:57:27
That everything that was in the city's records. 01:57:28
Also appeared on the Transparent Utah website. 01:57:31
But they were. 01:57:33
Originally missed. 01:57:34
And those were $35 million of direct payments to developers. 01:57:36
Over those four years, that's your professional opinion. 01:57:40
I don't remember that. 01:57:44
I would have to go back to be able to answer that question. I have to go back and look at the exact payments because I don't 01:57:45
remember who they were all to, but there were a number of them that were. 01:57:49
To developers. 01:57:53
Because they were entered in after the year end after the submission of. 01:57:55
For that last quarter of the year, so. 01:57:59
The city had until. 01:58:02
The end of July to upload their things. 01:58:04
And those those. 01:58:07
Adjustments were uploaded into the city, so they they submitted it in July. 01:58:08
And end of July. 01:58:13
And then later on in September, October's, they're getting ready for their audit. They discovered that they hadn't put those in. 01:58:14
And so then they were journal entered in. 01:58:18
And that's when. 01:58:21
That's when they were entered, but the report had already been submitted to the Transparent Utah website. 01:58:23
Again. 01:58:28
As far as a motive of was it intentional or not? 01:58:31
We did not look into that. 01:58:35
Timing wise, when those entries were made, it made sense that they. 01:58:38
They were made. 01:58:41
And, and I know that's what our finding was, was that they weren't included with the original upload. 01:58:43
And that's the recommendation that they have to upload all of those ones after when the audit report is finished. 01:58:49
Going forward. 01:58:54
I got one more. Well, just a comment for the citizens. 01:58:55
I think the citizens went through quite an emotional rollercoaster, or at least I did over the past 18 months and I think it's. 01:59:02
You can recognize. 01:59:08
When you have two governments like a city, especially leadership in the city saying this is the way it is and the state auditor. 01:59:10
Saying this is the way it's it. 01:59:16
And I know I felt the heat because I kept saying like no state auditor, state auditor. And I think. 01:59:18
I just want to make. 01:59:24
You know, that's a hard thing for citizens to. 01:59:25
Lose trust right when 2 conflicting government. 01:59:28
I just want citizens to understand that there's there's a hotline and. 01:59:31
During this two years, we kept screaming like, just call the state auditor calls it. What is that phone number? What is the 01:59:34
service? Real quick, Just make sure they understand so they're holding us accountable so if those conflicts ever arise. 01:59:39
They can call your office and clear it out because I'm grateful for me. 01:59:44
I hope this clears my name. 01:59:48
This isn't a. 01:59:50
Brad, you know bad juju going the other way of. 01:59:51
Everything but like. 01:59:55
I think it's really important that. 01:59:56
They don't feel like they can't call or sit back and go. Which government is. 01:59:58
You know, so what's that hotliner? So. So the state auditor's website is auditor Utah Gov. 02:00:02
And it'll pull up. 02:00:09
You know the state, there's a web page in the top right hand corner. It says a thing for hotline. 02:00:10
If you click on that, it'll provide. 02:00:15
Both a web form that you can fill out information if there's documentation that you can upload. 02:00:16
Or a phone number for that you can call. 02:00:21
Yeah. And that that would be? 02:00:22
Your options Fill out the web form, send us an e-mail, give us a call and walk through the information. 02:00:25
I will. 02:00:31
If we're making a plug for the state's hotline. 02:00:32
I would tell the public. 02:00:34
The more specific information that you can provide. 02:00:36
The better. 02:00:40
You know, sometimes we receive complaints and says well. 02:00:43
The mayor was really mean. 02:00:46
I'm sorry. 02:00:48
I tried. There's there's nothing that we can do about that kind of complaint. 02:00:50
Other than just. 02:00:53
Commiserate with him for a minute and and send them on their way. But if you can say hey. 02:00:54
The city. 02:01:00
Took this action and they didn't have a public hearing like they were required to on this day. It makes it really easy for us to 02:01:03
go out. 02:01:07
Pull the agenda. 02:01:11
Listen to the meeting. 02:01:12
Verify what happened and. 02:01:13
Then call the. 02:01:15
Where's your public notice? Because we didn't. 02:01:16
It wasn't a public notice website. 02:01:18
And then we can quickly. 02:01:20
Respond to those cities and help them do things. 02:01:22
A lot of the times. 02:01:24
That doesn't mean that that action. 02:01:26
Won't happen. 02:01:27
But we would contact the city and say hey. 02:01:29
You adopted your budget and you didn't. 02:01:31
Have a public hearing like you were supposed to. 02:01:33
Do it again. 02:01:35
And then they would have to re advertise it. 02:01:36
Hold the public hearing. 02:01:38
And then? 02:01:39
They may come to the exact same. 02:01:40
And result of adopting that budget or taking the action that they propose to do before. 02:01:42
But that way. 02:01:47
It's happens in. 02:01:48
In the public eye, how it's supposed to. By statutes, Sure. 02:01:50
OK. Well, Seth, thank you so much for sorry, that was just my last question. Is Vineyard currently compliant with everything? 02:01:53
Just want to make sure. 02:02:00
Good to go forward. 02:02:02
We have all those things to clean up. You could look it up right now if you wanted to, if you have your computer. 02:02:05
You can go to. 02:02:10
Auditor, Utah Gov. 02:02:11
And and anyone in the public could do this. You can go to auditor.utah.gov and the banner across the top. 02:02:13
Will say there's a button for local governments, and if you clicked on that button for local governments, it'll pull up a 02:02:18
dashboard. 02:02:21
And the second tile down on the left says compliance dashboard. 02:02:24
And it's available for everybody. You can click on compliance dashboard. 02:02:29
Type in Vineyard and it will pull up. 02:02:32
PDF downloadable report that will say anything that the city is missing at any given time. 02:02:35
So if you're, if you're concerned about that as a governing body member, it's a tool that we put out there. Awesome. So you can go 02:02:42
out there and check on it anytime. 02:02:45
And if it pops up. 02:02:49
Green is good. 02:02:51
Yellow is delinquent. 02:02:52
Red is bad. 02:02:53
So we training. 02:02:55
Can I ask now? 02:02:56
So on your previous response. 02:02:58
To Councilman Nair. 02:03:00
And you went through the. 02:03:03
Conversation about. 02:03:05
Redoing a process. 02:03:07
What in your? 02:03:10
Opinion. Umm. 02:03:12
Is the obligation. 02:03:13
Of a City Council. 02:03:15
If you think a process was misfollowed previously. 02:03:17
To revisit that. 02:03:20
I think that's probably one that you'd probably need to talk to your. 02:03:28
Your city attorney about. 02:03:30
On whether or not they felt like it needed to be redone. 02:03:32
There is nothing in statute that. 02:03:35
That doesn't say hey. 02:03:37
We went through this process. 02:03:39
We adopted this policy. 02:03:41
I'm not entirely happy with it. 02:03:43
Let's bring it back and talk about it again. 02:03:46
And or change it. 02:03:50
Obviously if you if one of those decisions was something that was contractual and now you've got another third party that's. 02:03:51
That's relying on that contract. 02:03:57
You would have to talk to your attorney to see if that action was. 02:04:00
Void or avoidable? 02:04:03
Because of whatever reasons. 02:04:04
And we would not. 02:04:07
I wouldn't go into that. 02:04:09
I won't be open. 02:04:10
Pint on that but. 02:04:11
If it's something else that's that's a city policy or anything else like that and you felt like it. 02:04:12
Didn't receive the. 02:04:16
You know what it deserves. 02:04:19
You can take it back and you can. 02:04:21
You can look at things again. 02:04:23
Things change. 02:04:24
So you can go back and look at those as many times as you feel like you need to. 02:04:25
You have a lot of other business to do too, so. 02:04:29
Yeah, use your time wise, yeah. 02:04:31
You good? 02:04:33
Yeah, OK, awesome. 02:04:35
Thank you, Seth. 02:04:36
Kim, appreciate your time. You guys are awesome for coming down and and explaining that to us. I really, really do appreciate it. 02:04:38
Also, thank Nora. 02:04:41
She's wonderful. 02:04:45
I'm trying to be conscientious of time. I'm going to. 02:04:47
Tony, do we have any public comments today? Did anyone sign the sheet? 02:04:52
OK, awesome. So we'll. 02:04:56
Jump over that, I'm going to. 02:04:58
Do you want to ask? 02:05:00
Do we have any? 02:05:02
Public comments. 02:05:02
OK, sorry I forgot to mention this Chris before you. 02:05:05
Take off. 02:05:09
Audit committees. 02:05:11
Did, did we? Are we setting up an audit committee? 02:05:12
I think that's helpful, pertinent too. 02:05:15
The discussion you're saying? 02:05:17
OK, perfect. 02:05:18
Thank you. 02:05:21
Wasn't that subcommittee? 02:05:21
Isn't that me and David already made? 02:05:23
That's what we actually. 02:05:25
Well, like a formal audit, I think the subcommittee was to help establish the formal audit committee. We'd have more than. 02:05:27
Just three council members on the. 02:05:32
Audit committee typically. 02:05:35
Policies. All that's great. 02:05:38
Thank you, Sir. 02:05:41
Awesome. 02:05:43
OK, public comments. We didn't have any hands up. 02:05:44
If it's all right with everybody, I'd like to skip over 5 and 6 and maybe jump to the consent items. There was, I know that there 02:05:47
was some discussion. 02:05:51
I wasn't here last week obviously on 7.3. 02:05:56
So can I maybe get a motion? 02:05:59
To. 02:06:01
Can I make a motion to take? 02:06:04
7.3 off the consent item to allow us to talk about it but approve items. 02:06:05
7.1 and 7.2 I think we all agree. 02:06:11
I'd second. 02:06:14
OK, all in favor. 02:06:15
Aye, are we skipping reports or just? 02:06:18
You get doing them later if we have I was thinking, so it's getting pushed up at 8:00. 02:06:20
I'd like to. 02:06:27
How would you guys like to handle this? 02:06:28
I would just love a brief report from the subcommittees on. 02:06:30
Staffing and. 02:06:33
Just the ones so the public can be aware of what what's going on. 02:06:34
OK, I can. 02:06:38
Do you want to jump onto the? 02:06:40
When you have staffing. 02:06:41
Sure, there's a motion on the table first. Oh yeah, let's do motion with emotion. 02:06:42
Did we that passed though, I believe the yeah. Do we approve that? 02:06:46
OK, yeah, so the. 02:06:50
Staffing subcommittee, We've. 02:06:53
We were asked to go ahead and put together a sort of. 02:06:56
Mission statement essentially for the city as. 02:06:58
As we interview people, we can give them an idea of. 02:07:01
Exactly what you know we stand for and so forth and and as they went through all the. 02:07:04
Campaign promises. 02:07:09
Our various various candidates running at 1:00. 02:07:11
We've really kind of. 02:07:14
Dissolved into like like 4 points. 02:07:16
And so those points are. 02:07:19
We stand for true transparency for fiscal responsibility. 02:07:21
For personal integrity. 02:07:25
In public involvement. 02:07:27
And so those and those are the action points and there are various. 02:07:29
Ways to implement those, but those are the main. 02:07:33
Many things we want, we stand for. 02:07:35
OK, awesome. 02:07:37
And I think, and that's I'd ask if anyone else in the council has any other. 02:07:38
Additions to the outer clarifications. 02:07:42
Jacob, do you have anything? No that. 02:07:45
That's great. OK. 02:07:47
Just while we're talking about it, it's. 02:07:49
Come up in emails through HR. 02:07:52
We've received. 02:07:55
Applications for positions within the city. 02:07:56
I understand it's your intent to have. 02:08:00
David Larae, Jacob Wood and yourself on that. 02:08:04
Initial maybe interview, yeah. 02:08:08
Yep, that's the subcommittee. I just wanted to express willingness to participate in any of those should the need rise or the 02:08:10
availability. 02:08:13
Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate the the willingness to help out there. So. 02:08:17
Awesome. 02:08:21
So we do have like we have. 02:08:22
Put four different resumes for attorney and we. 02:08:23
And we've got a couple for. 02:08:26
Finance Director, Yeah, yeah, we have a couple of really. So we're not ready to move on. 02:08:28
All those yet, but correct. Yeah, we're still working through that, so. 02:08:33
Awesome, so no recommendations for certain. 02:08:37
Great. 02:08:39
Sorry, any updates on staffing positions or? 02:08:43
Just not in there. 02:08:45
So still just kind of in a. 02:08:50
Visioning phase. 02:08:52
Yeah. I think, I think we're still kind of assessing kind of what we're doing. We've received obviously some resignations that 02:08:53
are. 02:08:55
Dated for later in this month, so we're kind of working through that I. 02:08:58
And trying to. 02:09:03
Figure out. 02:09:04
Best practices. I think that. 02:09:05
Our intent obviously for, you know. 02:09:07
Is to run our. 02:09:09
City of the most. 02:09:11
Fiscally responsible. 02:09:12
Way that we can. 02:09:13
And while providing the maximum. 02:09:14
Value for the services we provide so. 02:09:17
That's kind of what we're. 02:09:20
Like you said, as we're just going through the visioning phase and. 02:09:21
And so forth so. 02:09:25
OK, thank you. Yep, no problem. 02:09:26
So we tabled 7.3. We'll talk about that later. Umm. 02:09:29
8.1 I know that there was. 02:09:33
Some a quick discussion 8.1. 02:09:36
Similar to the city attorney and. 02:09:40
Doing an emergency approval and. 02:09:43
Just putting it out to bid I move that we. 02:09:46
Table 8.1. 02:09:49
To allow us. 02:09:51
To put it out to bid. 02:09:53
To just follow the normal process. 02:09:54
2nd. 02:09:56
OK, awesome. Sounds good. 02:09:58
All in favor. 02:10:00
OK, awesome. 02:10:02
Hold on, sorry. 02:10:05
Didn't vote yet. 02:10:06
So appointments are usually like. 02:10:10
So we're just. 02:10:12
Having a, what's the process? For whatever reason, you're just going through it. 02:10:14
Like hiring process or? 02:10:17
Yeah, just put it out. 02:10:19
Just wanted to see. 02:10:22
Well, I think that this I think the city should put out for. 02:10:23
Not bid, but put out. 02:10:28
To hire and and allow. 02:10:30
The current or deputy and others to interview for that process instead of a point. 02:10:33
So I just think, give us. 02:10:39
Two or three weeks to. 02:10:41
Post and go through that process. 02:10:42
Well, to take based on the code that we approved previously. 02:10:45
It's my understanding that the mayor would bring the recommendations to us for that kind of position. 02:10:50
And the council would still be able to proceed with a panel interview. 02:10:55
Is that correct? 02:10:58
Yes, and we would. And by putting it off, we don't need default, we wouldn't need an emergency appointment, correct, because he's 02:10:59
very correct. So we're trying, we're trying to avoid that. 02:11:03
Correct of just. 02:11:08
Make sure that we're going through all the processes to. 02:11:10
Just, you know, look at all available candidates. 02:11:13
I'm fine to do that. Whatever you guys feel comfortable with I. 02:11:17
I'm that's totally fine with me, so. 02:11:20
OK. Yeah. If that's the process, then I'll vote. Yeah. OK, OK. 02:11:22
All righty. Sounds good. 02:11:26
We have to close the music session here on the agenda, but we don't have a need for that tonight, so I think with nothing else. 02:11:29
We are going to go ahead and adjourn. 02:11:35
7.307.3 Do we want to discuss that? 02:11:39
Or do you want to? 02:11:44
Discuss it. Let's go ahead and discuss it real quick. 02:11:45
So. 02:11:48
Yeah, the idea is that. 02:11:49
Not holding. 02:11:51
Meetings from six last week. Mayor, you weren't here. 02:11:52
It was. 02:11:56
You guys had all the fun without me. Yeah, it's like 4 hours getting late into the night and citizens leave at about 8. And so the 02:11:57
idea was that we would. 02:12:01
And instead of doing recurring special City Council meetings, it was that we would have in the off weeks, a. 02:12:05
Reoccurring. 02:12:12
Work session and that that work session could be done via zoom. 02:12:14
To make it a little bit easier. 02:12:18
For people to attend, but that we could get a lot of. 02:12:20
Things done during those work sessions. 02:12:24
I think that we're open for suggestions. Mayor, you weren't here about your agenda if you want to adjust, but the. 02:12:27
I want to point out that if we do a work session that we wouldn't be able to. 02:12:32
Don't do any business, correct? Sure, correct. Yeah. So, so, so that means our, our, our business votes would be. 02:12:37
Every two weeks, correct? 02:12:42
I think I think that that's kind of where I'm. 02:12:44
Sensing what I'd like to lean is maybe just do work sessions and with work sessions we don't need. 02:12:46
Do we need to? 02:12:51
We don't need to approve those. 02:12:53
Every week they need to be they have no, no, I'm yeah, I'm sorry. We of course we need to notice them, but we wouldn't have to go 02:12:54
into justice through. 02:12:58
An amendment. 02:13:03
The work sessions, is that correct? We could just notice them. 02:13:04
We have to vote for the annual. 02:13:09
Annual calendar. We need it. Yeah, we didn't know which ones are work sessions on the calendar. 02:13:11
OK. Yeah, we would. 02:13:17
Yeah, we need a calendar set up with all the. 02:13:18
Step ahead of time. 02:13:21
OK, then we can change live their electronic I think. Yeah, for sure. 02:13:22
Let's do this. Do you want to look at it throughout the week? Let's do that. If we could look at it and maybe just e-mail back and 02:13:25
I'll reach out to you guys and see. 02:13:29
Because one of the thoughts I had too is if we could do work sessions, perhaps during. 02:13:34
Business hours to. 02:13:38
Mitigate. 02:13:39
Strain on staff, I think that'd be helpful too just so let's just work through on this throughout the week and. 02:13:40
And just do that so. 02:13:46
I see that everyone nodding same motion to continue this item till next week so we have some time to review and 2nd. 02:13:48
That's exactly what I was looking for. 02:13:56
Aye, all right. 02:13:59
OK. Anything else? I think that's it. So we will adjourn the meeting. Thanks, guys. 02:14:01