IS IT TRUE June 13, 2013
IS IT TRUE our readers interests have been high about the reconciliation of the City of Evansville’s accounts?…it will be interesting to see which assertion of reconciliation the SBOA will endorse in the upcoming audit?…David Garrett is correct that knowing about a $7 Million discrepancy and not knowing how it happened does not constitute full reconciliation?…Controller Russ Lloyd is also right that there are accepted accounting practices to “wash away†the discrepancy with a one-time correction entry to raise the white flag of surrender and hit the reset button to magically declare the books to be reconciled so we can go forward without a scar on our accounts?…assuming that there is a $7 Million discrepancy and that the books were reconciled for the year 2010 it is safe to conclude that this discrepancy has happened since January 1, 2011?…if we further assume that this $7 Million discrepancy is a legacy of poor accounting handed to the Winnecke Administration and Russ Lloyd the only place to find this discrepancy is during calendar year 2011?…one would think that 18 months is enough time to comb through every check, nook, and cranny to find this discrepancy but it seems this has not been done to the satisfaction of either David Garrett or the Evansville City Council?…there are several possibilities for this the first of which is it has not legitimately been found?…it is also possible that it has been found and the source of the discrepancy is politically unpalatable to disclose?…it would be productive and would restore some faith in the competency of local government accounting to find and disclose the source of the discrepancy and let the chips fall where they will on the past administration?…if the City has indeed been diligently trying to find this discrepancy for 18 months and can’t there should be some time declared as drop dead date and just admit we can’t find it and plug some number in so this circus of idiocy can move forward with clean books even if they were cleaned by painting over the problem?…we really hope the discrepancy is found and that Russ and David agree on the final solution?
IS IT TRUE that another long time eastside business has announced that they are running up the white flag and closing up shop?…Lorenzo’s Bakery and Restaurant that has long served the community from the outlot at the Schnuck’s at the corner of Green River Road and Washington Avenue will soon be serving its last bowl of heavenly soup, its last magnificent salad, and sending its last basket of homemade bread to the houses of its customer base?…we encourage our readers to send Lorenzo’s out with a great ending and to develop a habit of going to your favorite places more often so we don’t lose more of our little treasures that if replaced will probably be another chain store?
IS IT TRUE the sequester cuts that were touted by President Barack Obama to be so painful that the people will be in breadlines has finally come home to roost here in Evansville and the State of Indiana?…the President did sort of overplay and over hype his pair of twos in this poker hand but there may be some pain after all?…the pain in this case is amazingly small and should be easy to backfill with local heartfelt charity?…the entire State of Indiana will be getting $700,000 less than expected which works out to a bank breaking 12 cents per Hoosier?…locally the YWCA will be losing $8,500 that they were counting on which works out to less than 5 cents per Vanderburgh County resident?…a few other local humanitarian groups are about to experience similar shortfalls?…if every person in Vanderburgh County would donate $1 to a sequester relief fund that any of our big rich churches could easily promote our charities will be better off than they were before the sequester by a wide margin?…this is a great opportunity to prove that local charity beats federal largesse and it does it more efficiently?…we encourage our readers to do their part and commit $10 each to one of the humanitarian groups that lost some funding from the sequester cuts?…the CCO is still free so consider this $10 a subscription alternative?
IS IT TRUE there is a very interesting article by Brad Linzy in today’s CCO that promotes unmetered water at flat rates?…much of the western world already does this?…he also raises the question of the reliability and useful life of smart meters like the ones in the Johnson Controls contract?…the average life of the batteries and the cost to service them should raise a few eyebrows?…maybe the eyebrows of the City of Evansville engineering department and the City Council should be raised?
Great point. Support local treasures.
I am a retired corporate accountant. This reconciliation thing sounds easy. Just ask the City Controller to produce the document which he believes justifies the $ 7 Million accounting entry you mention. The City Council’s representative said it plainly: no document has been provided, therefore the only conclusion is that the discrepancy was “plugged” (the Southern term for making your bank rec balance out. Up North, we used to call it “leveled”. You say potato, Dan Quayle says potatoe).
In a news release to Eyewitness News on Thursday, former Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel has a message for current Evansville City Councilman John Friend.
Weinzapfel is calling on Friend to stop the “inflammatory rhetoric”, which he says has brought progress in the city to a standstill.
In doing this, Weinzapfel breaks his silence about the ongoing political bickering at City Hall, which includes the hiring of an independent accountant to review city finances, and a state auditor’s report, which lists nearly a dozen examples of double payments to contractors during construction of the Ford Center.
The full text of former Mayor Weinzapfel’s comments is below. Councilman Friend has not yet commented on the release.
At the June 10 meeting of the Evansville City Council, Councilman John Friend stated that the Mayor Lloyd Winnecke Administration “inherited a mess” with regard to city finances.
We have been hearing this type of inflammatory rhetoric for 18 months. It is time for John Friend to provide substance to his allegations because I can only guess to what he is referring to.
He may be talking about problems encountered with the adoption of a new financial software system to replace a 25-year old system that had city government operating in the Stone Age. Although my Administration and the Winnecke Administration had difficulty converting the data from the old system to the new, the books were finally balanced and no irregularities were found. Throughout this process, the City maintained its very strong bond rating. But, that is old news.
So…what else could it be?
My administration left city finances in a better position than what we inherited. In fact, due to strong management and the willingness to make tough decisions, the combined cash balances in the general fund and parks fund went from $2.7 million when I took office in January 2004 to $7.6 million when I left office in December 2011. This represents a 180 percent increase.
The City completed and opened the new Ford Center on time and on budget. Its operations were left in sound hands with VenuWorks.
We brokered a deal with a developer to build a new convention hotel in downtown.
We put together a program with Johnson Controls to establish city-wide wifi and create a fiber optic network that offered tremendous economic development opportunities.
We had engineers working on plans to complete the Greenway project within the city.
The Arts District and Front Door Pride programs were going strong with additional money approved to continue the transformation of the area and local banks ready to commit millions of dollars in mortgage loans for market rate residential investment.
And, the list goes on.
What is clear to me is that Friend’s focus on the past and his inflammatory rhetoric have brought all progress in the city to a grinding halt. Our community needs leaders focused on a positive future or we will descend into mediocrity.
Jonathan Weinzapfel
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CCO Editorial Staff
In Your Face!!!!!!!!
OK, enough. Weinzapfel v. Friend, Guns-N-Hoses style at the Fraud Center next Friday night, 6/21.
Winner gets to blame the loser for “the Mess”.
Weinzapfel is afraid of Evansville descending into mediocrity. What a delusional fool he is. Evansville after 8 years of Weinzapfel will have to ascend allot to achieve mediocrity. After Weiney’s spending spree and neglect of the infrastructure mediocrity is something we must pass through to ever achieve decency.
He boasts about increasing the amount of cash in the parks account? He padded the bank account at the expense of letting our parks degenerate into a state of decay and crime.
The only mistake John Friend made was to not bring Weinzapfel to a grinding halt 10 years ago. You can’t forget that Weinzapfel campaigned on a platform that spending for a stadium was foolish and wasteful. He dissed Russell Lloyd then and he dissed his again today in his public statement.
How’s that hotel deal working out for Johnny Boy?
It is high time Wienie-Boy packed his bags and moved to Indy for the good of the taxpayers of Vanderburgh County.
And for the love of God, Wienie-Boy, please never come back!
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