The situation is not concluded.
Auditors have a legal responsibility to inform a Council of
unsatisfactory performance in the town's accounting procedures.
No evidence was found of wrongdoing.
Lack of proper of appropriate checks and balances, staff qualifications and training and management oversight , all provide an environment ripe with opportunity for wrong doing.
In previous years Council has been informed of insufficient staff in the finance department. Council moved to correct by authorizing more staff.
This situation also requires a Council decision.
Council is obliged to action. .
Failure to do so is a failure to govern by those to whom you delegated YOUR AUTHORITY and who are themselves governed by law.
An Auditor's Report noting serious deficiencies is not a slap on the wrist.
It requires correction.
Brace yourselves.
Thursday 4 October 2012
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8 comments:
2 words..... Bull Shit!
Over the top henny-penny like response
Do not be beguiled by the demand for more staff. That is CYA to shift the blame onto Council. More staff would not have prevented this debacle. Competent staff should have made it impossible.
Excuse me, but this is the Council that can only hold a special council meeting if Susan Walmer & Co. pull their strings. Couldn't even have one to deal with the termination clause. Do you seriously expect them to stop fighting like cats and put a plan into action?
This is a painful object lesson. It emphasizes the dangers of council ceding too much authority to Staff. And both Staff & Council have been heading down that road with more and more requests for additional authority. Hopefully the lesson will not be lost when the next attempt is made to get Council to hand over dealing with yet another ' little ' negotiation or transaction.
Funds that have been allocated to the wrong account have not been misappropriated.
They still exist.
Unfortunately they might now exist in such a manner as to lead Council to the wrong conclusion. The money is there, so let's go ahead and spend it - an option, not a necessity.
Once spent it is gone.
And when the book-keeping error is discovered and the funds are needed urgently for whatever reason, they are then taken from a contingency fund that might have nothing to do with anything urgent.
As to who is at fault, you can point a finger at everyone in the Treasurer's department. You are bound to find the culprit.
Surely there must have been a heads-up? Our auditors will call and sometimes visit as they move towards the end of our year. This should not have come as a big shock.
I can accept that the Town of Aurora is now a very large business. What I cannot accept is that they have so many accounts with double and triple digit sums that they have a problem keeping them straight. Gimme a break!
"More staff would not have prevented this debacle."
What debacle? We do not know what really is going on here. I suggest that we all take a breath and wait to hear the truth before we go off half-cocked over something posted here. This is why the council went in camera and this why Evelyn did not go into specifics.
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