Good morning all. At this time I will call to order the meeting of the audit and finance committee. Our first order of agenda, first order of business on our agenda is approval of our December 2nd meeting minutes.
All in favor say I. I. Motion passes unanimously. Next on our agenda is a briefing. It's the uh Chris Randall, our city auditor, discussing the audit work plan and activities that have been ongoing. Thank you, Patrice.
Good morning. Patrice Randall, city auditor. So, since the last audit committee meeting, we've released three audit reports and one data analysis report. The first audit was a city hall contracting audit where we were looking at contracts to determine whether the
contractors complied with the terms. Uh based on our audit results, with the exception of a minor of some minor insurance non-compliance issues, the contractors did comply with the contract requirements. We audited the Fort Worth Housing
Finance Corp. And the purpose for that audit was to determine whether the expenses were properly reviewed and approved. Based on our test results, they were. We did identify some control weaknesses. One of those was segregated duties. And in that particular instance,
we had some expenses where the approver was noted as a um generic under a generic user ID. An example, the approver would have been administrator. So because the user ID was not specific, we couldn't identify who approved the
transaction. And so with that, we could not determine whether the duties were segregated. And again, there were only a few of those. We had control issues over the blank check stock and there were some documentation that did not support the expenditures. Uh some examples would
be um for the uh housing support the clients were given bus passes and in some instances there was no support showing who received x number of bus passes valued at x dollar amount. And then the last one was formal written
policies and procedures. And in reference to segregated duties, I will say that the neighborhood services department or the housing finance corp has uh begun deactivating those generic user accounts or user IDs.
And we looked at the mowing contracts. These were not considered findings, but we did recommend that the contract when they um execute subsequent contracts that they include the entire property address that's being moan. So to include the unit numbers and we also recommended
that they consider competitively bidding those mowing service contracts. Uh during our audit the vendor they had used the same vendor since like 2016 and during 2024 they had paid the vendor approximately $70,000. So we recommended potentially uh going out and
competitively bidding that that contract. The last audit was tree mitigation fund. On that one, we found that the city has processes in place to ensure that the tree canopy is prepared and that they have controls in place to make sure the
fees are properly assessed and collected. We did identify a weakness with the uh the park department having a manual process. By being manual, there was less accountability. And an example would be they issue permits, the permits not pre-numbered. Uh if you pay and they
issue a receipt, the receipts are not pre-numbered. So, we're recommending that they automate that process that those controls are in place. And we also found that the the city code was clear in reference to uh tree mitigation fees
that are assessed by the planning department, but they weren't for those that are assessed by the parks department. And so, what the park department did is they assessed it based on their standard operating procedures, which were based on a prior ordinance. And so we recommended that just parks
and development services get with the city attorney's office and determine whether the ordinance should be updated or revised. Any questions on the audits? And then data analysis. We uh looked at duplicate payments, which is a routine test. We only identified one duplicate
payment and it had been identified by the department and had been refunded. We also followed up on a duplicate payment from a prior data analysis report and that duplicate payment had been refunded. We followed up on hotel occupancy taxes
and in a prior a prior data analysis report we identified three hotels that had not paid their hotel occupancy taxes and when following up two of those three hotels had paid. Yes,
>> on that one. Was that just a sampling or a full audit >> for the hotels? >> For the hotel. >> Okay. >> What are the next steps for the one that has not submitted payment? Anyone talk to that?
>> Alex Lawer, treasure. >> Good morning, committee and council members. Um so next steps we'll continue to um coordinate closely with legal to issue delinquency notices with unregistered non-compliant hotels and continue enforcement remedies in that regard. And if we've exhausted those
enforcement remedies internally uh and they're still unresolved then we'll uh evaluate pursuing with our collection agent Limeburgger for further enforcement. Thank you. >> Yes. And then we also did a test looking at warranties over the automobile batteries
and just the vehicles themselves. So for automobile batteries, we found that there were some invoices the city received and paid for in for batteries that were replaced during the warranty period. So, in speaking with property management, there was some difficulty in
trying to uh determine whether or not we received uh the credits that we deserved for those batteries that were under warranty. And so, they will begin reconciling the na the Napa monthly billings to faster and the technicians are going to begin checking for issues
that lead to frequent battery replacements. In reference to toes, um, property management indicated that when it's a police or fire vehicle, they have to bring those vehicles in regardless to remove the apparatus, uh, the add-ons.
And so, um, they are going to, even though they do that, they are going to consider whether or not the initial toll should be covered by warranty. Any questions on data analysis? And then the last thing just to give y'all a heads up, our department is in the
process of um I guess developing a um a page on the intranet and on on that page we're going to have the status of audit recommendations. So a department will be able to go to that page and see which
audit recommendations are outstanding, which ones have been fully implemented, which ones have not been implemented. We will also include our audit and finance committee presentations as well as providing audit tips to the U city overall. And that concludes our report.
>> Thank you, Patrice. Any questions? Go, please. >> Patrice, this looks nice. When do you anticipate completing this um page on >> our goal is no later than March 31 because we've got to coordinate with other departments. I think CC CPE and
another department I think to get it done. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Patrice. Okay, that concludes our business today, I believe. >> So, I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn.
So moved. So done. Meeting adjourned.