At face value it looks alarming, but a recent decision by council to increase the City's line of credit to $15 million will make sense in the long run, says Mayor Roy Ludwig.
At the April 22 regular meeting of council, a motion was passed to hike the line of credit to $15 million from $12 million. Ludwig said the decision was part of a change in the way the City operates financially and will allow them to reduce the line of credit by a significant margin.
He added the audit was not because of any particular incident. However, with a newly elected council and the announcement that treasurer Tim Leson was retiring, council decided to have an audit conducted by the local MNP office.
As a result of the audit, Ludwig said MNP suggested that "instead of running everything through one general account and increasing our (line of credit), we should package some of this long term debt. We are looking at roughly $10.2 million that we will be putting into a 10-year term to pay back and at that time we can lower the (line of credit) that we have taken from $12 million to $15 million probably to $6 million or so."
Ludwig noted the audit and further ongoing work by MNP has led to a number of suggestions that they will also be implementing with an end goal of creating a more efficient and transparent operation. One such area he mentioned was their human resources division.
"We are just in the discussion stages with human resources about how we can find more efficiencies in that area - have we got enough people in certain departments? We are looking at efficiencies across the board as well."
Ludwig said they have implemented MNP's suggestion of instituting a whistle-blower policy that would cover any staff members or contractors doing business with the City.
"It gives the opportunity for anyone who sees something that is questionable or that they are not happy with, they can phone a number and MNP will investigate, and if it's founded, then they will follow it through," said Ludwig. "Again, it's just an efficiency thing that makes everyone accountable. It's something that MNP brought forward and we embraced it."
Ludwig said Spectra Place was also a focus of the audit as council has been seeking more detailed information on the facility's operations and how revenue generated from events was being accounted for.
"It's a new building for us and there's a lot of new things that we didn't have before so we want to make sure that we have all the necessary checks and balances efficiencies in place, so this has been focusing on Spectra Place more than the other areas," he said.
"At the point of sale, our cash registers will tell us exactly what we are selling at the counters. We are looking at reviewing our liquor sales at events; how do we more positively track all of those sales so at the end of the night we can say we've had this many draft beer sales, this many hard liquor sales, we've sold this much on the concession side.
"We just want to do a better job of tracking and I know some of our residents have come forward with concerns on things that they thought were maybe an issue and maybe seeing some things that they were a little uncomfortable with. We are just looking at how can we do the very best that we can do and put systems in place so we can say with more certainty 'this is what we made at this event.'"
Ludwig said other suggestions from MNP revolved around the counting of money at events and ensuring that whomever deposits the money after events is accompanied by the police. He said there were also further suggestions about how money is handled at City Hall.
"They are just extra precautions that we probably should have been doing but maybe we got lackadaisical over the years. We are always going to get finger pointing as a public institution and that is part of what happens being a public institution. People have every right to question what we do and we embrace that."
Ludwig said all suggestions will be implemented in the coming months and the public will be made aware of any changes as they take place.
