This is posted without edit, opinion or bias:
Dear Colleagues…
Attached is an email that I sent to Steve Schaefer concerning mis-directed Ford Center payments applied to the North H.S. project instead of the Arena totaling $1,645,000. The funds have been credited back to our accounts this month. As you all are aware, I have been requesting an audit on the Arena Project since May of this year. The administration, per my request, asked the SBOA to schedule the audit, but, nothing, at this time, has been scheduled by the SBOA. As it seems, payments were paid out of are trust fund to the benefit of EVSC. Oddly, this happened in September of 2011 totaling approx $1,434,000 and, again, in April of 2012, totaling $207,000. We, as the council for Evansville, should be strongly encouraging an audit. What other transactions have gone unnoticed And, why wouldn’t the EVSC contact the Bank indicating the error, twice, may I add? According to the bank officials, they indicated that this was simply an error, and was recently corrected, discovered by the bank, not by the City nor the EVSC.
As such, my dear colleagues, I, personally have had enough of the lack of reconciliation and weak internal controls, and, this is WHY I have strongly urged us to engage our own oversight representative. Please see the attached disbursement journals and pay attention to the term “North Campus” which should have been a “red light” for the City to react. I have requested from the Bank to provide emails to establish the timeline and individuals involved in these transactions.
Please let me know if you have any questions….John
Sure, the safest way out of this mess is for the bank to take the hit and try to pass it off as an error, but banks are subject to audits also, and to customer faith in the accuracy of their transactions.
Just an error? How about just two errors? Now you have some bank clients wondering just what is going on at your bank. Can you blame the clients if they start going over their bank statements? I mean, its just $1.6 million, right? Nothing to get excited about. It only took someone a year to discover it.
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And yes, why WASN’T David Smith on the horn immediately? I know they do not have any CPAs on the payroll, but looks like someone in their financial department at EVSC would have noticed the rather large $1,434,000. on their statement.
The stuff that keeps rolling out of this city administration just boggles the mind.
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As I have said many times, EVSC should have books audited. They have been free uncontrolled spending and doing crooked things for years.North campus was suppose to cost less than 150 mil.Just another reason to get rid of the RUBBER STAMP board.
The SBOA just has an “audit” function. What I want to know is who in the hell has the “enforcement” function when statute is violated?
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When is the State Attorney General going to be called in to get to the bottom of the city financial malfeasance ?
I still don’t understand why Mr. Friend would be so (rightly) concerned about balanced books but perfectly ok with voting to approve the 2013 budget before we even know what the books should actually look like right now. He has admitted Roberts Stadium demo is a bad idea, yet he voted for the budget that contained funding for it.
Totally schizophrenic.
Why would anyone expect the EVSC to look a $1.4 million dollar gift horse in the mouth, much less and additional gift of $207,000?
Could it be that Old National Bank is the depository bank of the city, too? It is the only bank the EVSC uses for any of it’s transactions, although previous EVSC administrations divided the revenues between three local banks.
How did the EVSC account for that windfall? Did they spend it on more degrees for select administrators, more technology, travel or did they put into the Rainy Day Fund?
The city and the EVSC need full audits, not just the cosmetic review of bookkeeping procedures the SBOA runs every other year.
If the city can’t do a better job of keeping track of the tax streams and other money flowing into and out of its coffers, they have no business trying to force the county to combine governments and tax revenues through consolidation. It sounds like there are too few people double checking procedures in the accounting department of the city.
Someone, please pull Jenny Collins out of the water dept. before it starts leaking money all over the place, too.
Vote NO in NOvember!
The City uses Fifth Third.
Conflict?
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I like how every time you find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place, you come out with one of these audit requests. What good does it do to audit these things if you’re just going to let Winnecke pee away $700,000 from the CC alone not to mention the auction funds as well as the building itself which STILL has the windows and doors on it even today?
You voted for the 2013 budget, that speaks for itself no matter how many times you try to walk it back.
None of you geniuses has asked specifically where the money came from, and to which general ledger account it should have been posted in the first damned place! Combine that with the typos and the poor syntax in these posts it is impossible to determine specifically what went wrong. It appears as if no one in city or county government, much less the folks at the school corporation, know their butt from first base!
Mr Friend, are you not finance chair of the financial branch of the city, and a CPA? If so, is it not part of a CPA’s job to audit books? Why dont you show us some real savings, and audit these accounts, and do your JOB?
FYI, it would be unethical for a CPA to audit an enterprise in which he had a fiduciary interest.
An auditor is required to be independent of the audited entity.
Mr Friend states that the error was discovered by the city, but in the letter from Mr Jones, it states that it was the DMD who discovered the error and pointed it out to the bank. Which is it John?
No telling what an audit of the EVSC books would show.
Once again, Mr. Friend shooting out emails looking like he’s so interested with getting these audits done. Mr. Friend – you are one of the people who voted yes for the budget to be passed KNOWING now that the books were not reconciled. Good grief… Stop acting like you care..
What I don’t understand, all of the City Council members seem so suprised by all of this, but yet they continue business as usual. Voting for the budget ect.. No calls for real answers, the people who let this happen should be in fear of loosing their jobs! It appears all that is happening is “Oh it was the computer systems fault..ok..don’t do that again”
Where is the call for answers?
Also, it appears we as a city are spending WAY TOO MUCH for IT consulting! Someone needs to get control of all of this!
I have a rudimentary understanding of government accounting and banking but…
this appears to me similar to a bank disbursing escrow money from a Chrysler account to pay a bill for Proctor and Gamble.
What am I missing?
It has been illuded to in previous posts but would reconciled accounts by the City of Evansville AND Evansville-Vanderburgh School Coroporaton have caught the “erroneous mistake” no matter who made it?
Aren’t there procedures in place which call for an invoice number or a project number before disbursemet?
I have been Controller for several corporations simultaneously. Not once did I OR MY STAFF pay company X when the check should have been made out to Company Y.
But, I guess, in government, incompetence just passes from one office to another.
I have a rudimentary understanding of government accounting and banking but…
this appears to me similar to a bank disbursing escrow money from a Chrysler account to pay a bill for Proctor and Gamble.
What am I missing?
It has been illuded to in previous posts but would reconciled accounts by the City of Evansville AND Evansville-Vanderburgh School Coroporaton have caught the “erroneous mistake” no matter who made it?
Aren’t there procedures in place which call for an invoice number or a project number before disbursemet?
I have been Controller for several corporations simultaneously. Not once did I OR MY STAFF pay company X when the check should have been made out to Company Y.
But, I guess, in government, incompetence just passes from one office to another.
But, I guess, in government, incompetence just passes from one office to another……………I think you call it “INBREEDING”
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