3 Year Old Unsubmitted City Audits Drawing More Excuses & 10 Letters from State
November 28th, 2016 by-
- May 2015 letter to Mayor Zack Tucker, over past due city audits.
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- November 2016 letter, sent individually to all city attorney and all councilmembers.
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- September 2016 City Council Meeting minutes, MLive questions audits.
The city of Monticello used to have Searcy & Co. perform the yearly city audits. Since 2013, when Searcy & Co. began taking a daily, active role in the city finance department, they became ineligible to perform the yearly audit.
Since that time, a private audit company out of Little Rock was hired to perform this task.
However, since 2013, no audits have been completed and submitted to the city. Just “acceptable reasons” for the tasks not being completed (this includes an employee’s medical absence).
At the September City Council meeting, MLive’s reporter asked for an update, (meeting minutes are posted above) and was told the minutes would be completed during October. Last week, MLive was told the deadline had now been moved to December 3.
To make the situation more complicated, the city council voted at their October meeting to request the department of legislative audit perform ongoing audits of the city finances, due to the allegations of misappropriations over the past two years.
At their last meeting, the department of Legislative Audit approved the city’s request, but only for 2016, which does not cover a large portion of the alleged misappropriation of city funds.
Hopefully, these topics will be addressed at Monday night’s city Council meeting. The eeting will be held Monday at 6 PM at City Hall, in an effort to avoid the conflict with the city Chamber of Commerce Christmas parade, Tuesday at 6 PM.
