Weed & Pest back on track

When Paul Stille of Leo Riley & Associates presented this year’s county audit, it once again included reference to an issue within the Weed & Pest department that suggested operational difficulties severe enough to have caused a “near complete breakdown in the accounting process”.

However, he was quick to note that the issue has now been solved and only appeared in the audit because the timeline spilled over into the fiscal year of 2021-22.

“This will be gone this year,” he said.

“Last year I came and met with you about the problems that there were some things happening there at the Weed and Pest – people not doing their jobs properly and so on. We’ve got that under control, but it still happened in this fiscal year, so it still comes up.”

At the time, Stille’s audit report attributed the problems to, “the loss of personnel with the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to do the daily bookkeeping properly and the board’s reluctance to…recognize the situation and take immediate action”.

Problems included reports not being filed and remittances not being made in a timely manner, invoices not billed to customers, payments not deposited, errors in accounting for sales tax, disbursements and payroll checks not entered into the system and two sets of books, neither of which contained a complete set of data.

“They did hire a bookkeeper and I think things are good and on track on that,” Stille said last week.

Stille commented again that he does not believe the issues were caused with malicious intent.

“We think it was mainly just incompetence – at this point we have no evidence there was anything missing or anything like that,” he said.

However, he did note that he, “Can only audit what appears in the books” and therefore there may be evidence of wrongdoing he is unaware of.

“If it never gets into the books then it’s real hard to prove it ever existed,” he said.

The Board of Trustees included a response to this year’s audit that outlines the steps that have been and will be taken to ensure the issue does not come up again.

These include the board being more involved in the daily affairs of the district and being more sensitive to situations where work is not being done in a timely manner or requests for information go unfulfilled.

The board also pledged to review the qualifications of employees and demands of the job to ensure the employees have the skills, knowledge and experience needed, and provide training or assistance if not.

“In February, 2022, the board hired a qualified full-time employee to take care of the problems caused by former employees. The board is monitoring the efforts of the new employee and is confident that, given time, all problems will be corrected,” continues the board’s response.

“To aid the new employee, the board has hired a local accountant who consults on difficult matters. Nevertheless, the board still retains all books and records on site. The board is committed to ensuring that all policies and procedures are being followed.”