Township Under Audit

It is time for our bi-annual audit - every two years we undergo an audit which is intended to make sure that our financial reports accurately represent the financial position of the township. The last time we were audited covered the 2004 and 2005 calendar years; state auditors are now looking at 2006 and 2007.

Our last audit was a bit problematic. Going back to 2000, auditors had instructed township staff to make certain adjustments to properly reflect which funds received money but these adjustments had not been made. So 6 years worth of adjustments had to be made at one time which created some additional problems.

In the past year since our last audit was concluded, I have had numerous conversations with our staff regarding making sure this year we would get a clean audit report. I was assured that the prior problems had been corrected and things were fine. Unfortunately, now I am hearing that the same problems that had to be corrected in prior years are still happening.

Clearly, this does not make me happy. I am not of the mind to micro-manage our staff, as I consider them professionals capable of performing their assigned duties with efficiency and experience. But somewhere along the line, issues have not been addressed and we are not functioning as we should be 100% of the time.

The addition to our staff of Jim Beck as our Director of Accounting and Budgeting will allow the township to address this problem, along with helping us down the road of making long-term plans, setting investment and accounting policies, and making sure we are able to monitor daily and weekly expenditures to keep expenditures in line with budgets.

While I struggled a little with the expense of having a full-time Director of Accounting and Budgeting, the reality is that we have a budget in excess of $22 million, a cash balance exceeding $15 million, and we're embarking on a $10 million capital plan including needing to become rated for bonding purposes. Those factors dictate we put adequate resources toward preserving, monitoring and planning the township's cash resources.