Beaumont Finance Committee First Meeting

By: Libi Uremovic | Original Article at patch.com

Lots of Interesting Information was Disclosed, but the Meeting was Not Recorded.

The first City of Beaumont Standing Financial Committee meeting was held on January 26, 2016. You’ll recall that the Ad Hoc Finance Committee hired the auditing firm of Van Lant & Fankhanel LLP (VLF) last summer.

The Standing Finance Committee is composed or Treasurer Nancy Carroll,
Mayor Mike Lara, Council member Lloyd White and volunteer Community Members, Jennifer Burnett, Elaine Morgan, Diana Harris, Rebecca Carr, Rey Santos, and John Halliwell.

At Tuesday’s Meeting the following was revealed:

1. The Auditing Firm hired by the City is not going to Audit the 2014 Financial Statements that Council rejected. Interim City Finance Director told White that the new Auditing Firm will not redo Moss, Levy’s Audit that was rejected by Council.

That’s almost a partial truth.

Once the Council rejected the Moss Levy 2014 Audit it became worthless and another Auditing Firm must audit the City’s Financial Statements. The new Auditing Firm does not ‘redo Moss Levy’s Audit’, they simply audit the 2014 Financial Statements themselves. It has been almost a year since Council rejected the 2014 Audit, but apparently not one member of Council or the Finance Committee gave the 2014 Audit another thought.

2. The Finance Committee hired the new Auditing Firm, Van Lant & Fankhanel, to audit the 2015 Financial Statements, but they can’t Audit the 2015 Financial Statements because the City never closed the books.

It’s been seven (7) months and the City has yet to close the books for Year Ending June 30, 2015. The books should have closed within 15 days after the close of the year.

3. Beaumont’s Interim Finance Director Onyx Jones, who was brought in by Urban Futures, is not a CPA, and does not have the supporting data to close the books.

When Former Finance Director Bill Aylward slithered away on May 1, 2015 he was the only degree’d Accountant on staff. In a City with the population of 40,000 there should be at least three Accountants and three Accounting Techs. The City has paid a fortune for lawyers and consultants, but they have their own agenda, which is stealing money, not operating the City.
Beaumont’s City Council and Finance Committee has been played like fools for the past nine (9) months.

4. The Finance Committee was ‘shocked’ to find out there is no Finance Department.

The City of Beaumont has not had a Finance Department since it was removed from the Budget in 2013 which is blatantly obvious when reading the Budget.

I told Council that there was no Finance Department in their 2016 Budget, but Council ignored me and blindly followed their overpriced consultants that created a Budget to funnel money out of the City even faster than previous years.