Okay.

All right.

It's 6 o'clock, so we're going to go ahead and call the meeting to order.

And as a reminder, we are going to be using the mics because it's recorded, so please make sure those are on.

And then we're going to go around the room and introduce ourselves, and that helps the reporting layers kind of know who is talking.

So I'm Dina Anfield and the chair of the committee.

Rough Bragg member at large.

Oops.

Rough Bragg member at large.

Amanda Strange, Director of Internal Audit.

Christy Fisher, Staff Auditor.

Katie Flores, Senior Manager with Forest Lazars.

Neil Martin as a member from the board of directors.

Audrey could also board records.

The law warned citizen at large.

Thank you all.

So I think everybody has the agenda packet.

So our first item on the agenda will be to approve the minutes from our January 8th meeting.

If those went out in the packet, if everybody has a chance to read those, and if there are any changes or if I can get a motion to accept those.

So I can all in favor say aye.

I opposed.

Thank you.

And just turn it over to David and Katie and let y'all kind of give us an update on where we stand with the financial statement audit and an update on the three fund procedures for paranormal, you'll go from there.

Alright.

Well, thank you thank you very much for allowing us to be here tonight.

We started it this week.

So we we were on site at the city starting Monday.

We plan on being here about three weeks or whatever it'll take.

I will tell you we have got just just hammered with with PVCs and trial balances and everything else.

So Andy and team have done their part to get us going.

But you know, it takes about a week for us to kind of get our arms around everything, get it everything uploaded in our system.

So that's what we're in the process of doing right now.

Um we're gonna have another two people here next.

We're gonna have a total of three or four people at a time here going forward starting next week.

Um so again, about three weeks.

I will tell you we we have analyzed the CEPA, that is your federal grants schedule.

Um that's one thing we do really early in planning to determine which audit pro which federal program we're gonna have to audit since you you all do receive federal awards.

Um this year our through our risk assessment we identified the federal transit cluster uh that we're gonna have to audit this year.

So in the process of developing PVC list for that, so you know how it works is we do we we get an initial upload of documents and data, and then we do our our planning, our risk assessment on that, and kind of formulate our audit plan uh select samples.

So we haven't provided the city with with a numerous samples or anything yet, so that'll be upcoming uh next week for them to pull.

So I don't have any doubt that they're not gonna be able to turn those around really quick for us.

Um as a as part of our our our procedure, we will interview key members of management, um, including uh Sinfield is the audit committee chair just to determine if there's any items that what's going on, let us just get their feel for what's going on at the city, if there's anything that they feel is is riskier for us to look at.

Um so we're in the process of getting those scheduled uh right now.

Um you know, any audit um we are required by the standards to identify certain risks.

I mean, there's those risks associated with any audit.

Uh the vast majority of our audits have management over controls.

Um that's still a risk for us in pretty much any audit.

What that means is can management manipulate controls in order to do something they're not supposed to be doing, so that's always a risk that we have we we we develop audit procedures to to combat that.

Another one is in proper revenue recognition.

So for a city, you can imagine all the revenue sources that the city gets everywhere from property taxes to fees charge to water to everything.

So we have to make sure that all that revenue is recorded in the appropriate period and there's a proper cutoff.

So sometimes, you know, in the heat of the battle, um, you know, finance apartments will you know may not get revenue in the appropriate period.

I'm not saying that goes on here at the city of Fort Smith, but that's always a risk for us uh when when we're doing our risk assessment, okay, proper revenue recognition because there is complexities around revenue recognition in the current uh audit standards and accounting standards, so it's always a risk for us.

The other one, since you get uh federal dollars, federal awards is non-compliance with laws and regulations around federal wards, so that we look at that through our single audit um through various matters to test that appropriately.

So that's that's our initial risk overall for the overall audit engagement.

Um, we'll narrow those down as we go along, but that's our initial risk.

Um, our goal is to issue the audit uh in order for you to meet the GFOA uh timeline, which is June 30.

We want to get that done earlier this year.

So I haven't talked to Andy or Amanda or whomever about scheduling this meeting or exactly when we want to schedule it.

I know every year it seems like we we talk about you know, are we going to present here and then issue, or are we going to present and then go present it to the board and issue so we can work that out with with Andy and team later or or now or whatever y'all want to do.

Um but things are going great in the four days that we've been here for the audit, um, but we're just getting started.

Okay, so that's that's the audit update.

After doing the risk assessment as far as the CFED, are you thinking the transit program cluster will be the only major program this year?

Yes.

Okay.

As of now.

Now, if there's I have a preliminary trial balance.

Okay, so I I'm I'm I'm 90% sure that it that it's good, but I mean, if he provides me an adjustment or something down the road that could potentially change, okay, you know, because I mean it it is impacted by expenditures.

So if if somebody comes along and says, well, I forgot we didn't book you know 300,000 on this particular grant, and then it throws it over the threshold, then we could have to audit another one, but we don't expect that.

Thank you.

Renard well, I was I was gonna say I remember a couple of pretty large grants having to do with uh uh one was kind of the safe streets grant to do some modifications there, and there was um another one kind of along the same line.

Um and then the the there was a grant, I think that related to the uh structures over in the parking lot just across the street.

Um although that that may have all been related to the panels, that may not have been a grant.

Um I think it was.

I don't know if we got ended up getting safe streets for all grant.

That's a federal grant, the safe street well, yeah.

I don't think we actually got to avoid it.

Do you want to do that?

I thought we did get it and we're using it to do some of the sidewalks and things.

Yeah, and but I'm not sure they spent much money on it.

Yeah, that may be the maybe it goes off expenditure, yeah.

So it may be that it's next year's okay issue, but that'd be something to check, and those um Andy would obviously know that, but uh respected that what you just said demonstrates one of the risks that we have is is making sure that that CIFA is complete.

Oh, and that came up last year, yeah.

And it delayed the whole thing because the federal records were coming in.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, that that is a very manually, I mean, I say it's manual.

I I don't exactly know how the city puts it together, but there is opportunities for errors in that CIFA prep.

Is that a good way of putting it?

I mean, like it, you know, even puts it together, it's not a system-generated report.

So if you can imagine I see you thinking about that, I I can provide an example.

So let's just say that, and I don't know that this would ever happen, but you know, a department got some funding and it wasn't communicated appropriately, or they miscommunicated that it was state a state grant or private.

Yeah, and not federal, and you know, determined that it's federal, then that's when you get into a situation like that.

Okay, and we I know we talked about last year, there have been, and I think those are kind of going getting less, but they're especially during COVID, there were issues of determining whether it was the state or federal grant.

Yeah, uh, we we we have seen an uptick in single audit CIFA errors the past year or two and a lot of our clients because it seems like it's getting harder and harder to identify those those those grants and whether or not where to put them in the state.

So you have to have controls around it.

I I think the city does, right?

I mean, we just have to test them.

And this is under the new threshold, right?

Yeah, yes.

So that that's the that's the the external audit.

Neil, did you have a question?

Well, I was it was kind of more so around kind of the timing of how we want to do this.

I I think in um we've we've always come back as a as a committee and then went to the board and then we filed.

Is that is that true historically is that how it worked?

Okay, yeah.

So I I mean I think that would be a probably a good plan force.

Yeah, we got any committee comments if there are any in incorporated in the draft.

Okay.

Uh I think they've been fewer comments the last few years than there were in the past.

I mean, if you go back a few years, there were there were more maybe more comments.

Um but uh it's it seems like the whole process got smoother in the last uh few years.

So um, but uh I think that is Yeah, I mean I I don't know if if I don't know how we need to like schedule all that.

I don't know, Andy, if you want to comment on when you can have a draft or um and then when we can get it to y'all by and then we I'd like to give it to you for a week or so before we have the meeting so you can review it, yeah, rather than giving it to you today uh for you know so I think the uh the schedule I think was a little bit tricky because I think the last regular board meeting in June, which is on the 16th.

Okay.

Unless there is a regular meeting scheduled on the 30th.

So there's there's a 23rd.

Is that a study session?

Uh well I guess we could call a special meeting on the 23rd.

The second is the first week of the so what is that?

Is it first week is a federal board meeting?

First week first Tuesday of the month?

Yeah.

It's just so the set we had a regular meeting.

So we got the second this, yeah, you're right.

That's right.

That's right.

We can call special special meeting if we needed to.

I think we need to maybe I would recommend keeping that in mind that we could get through the uh audit committee the week of the 16th or that week, and then get approval to file the audit, and then we may, I don't know if we'll we'll see how how we do on the schedule, but um I will be forwards to be able to issue that last week of June after they give us approval of the draft.

I just will be out.

I've got training that week of the 15th, so I will be out that week, but that doesn't mean I can't look at it before.

But um, so I think maybe if we if the option is getting the special doing a special meeting on the 23rd to get approval, that's probably what we need to shoot for and then back up our audit committee meetings before that once we see when the drafts are ready.

And uh I'd like to read it.

I mean, you know, Andy, it's kind of a process because he prepares it all, so I can read it at the same time y'all do, or however you want to do it.

I mean so I guess as we progress into you know May, see when you think you'll have a draft and kind of communicate with Amanda and we'll get kind of send some emails around and kind of start getting things on the schedule and plan from there.

That works.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll I I we I can work with Andy and then we can communicate that to Amanda and then um communicate to y'all.

Okay, and that um so we would look at it first in the year, go there, then it would go to the board plan unless before the plan on a special meeting on the 23rd or so to get approval.

Okay.

And David, just just to be clear for the record because how things can get twisted around as of right now, you don't have any issues that you know of or any concerns you know about Fort Smith and their uh application of the CIFA funds or anything like that.

No, no, no.

I just want that clearly.

So familiar with the nothing out there that's as an auditor, my job is to to think about anything that could possibly go wrong and communicate those to you.

So that's what I'm I'm doing.

I'm not insinuating there's any issues or anything like that.

Um it's just we have to be skeptical on every audit that we do that's part of our standards.

That's fine.

I just wanted that there.

Yeah.

Skepticism, professional skepticism.

There are two things worth mentioning.

You know, we did issue uh slightly less than 100 million dollars in bonds in late October.

I don't believe any of that money was spent um before the end of the year, maybe a little bit for fees or something, but um it was all you know trust account, I think.

Um and then the other thing is we and this is really a big achievement.

We got that 11 and a half years extension on the big deal.

Uh you know, the board had to pass the small rate increase for through 2030 that had to approve the election, then we all had to work to get that thing passed, and it did pass, and uh we issued those bonds, and we're set up to be able to issue I think 285 million dollars in additional bonds, something like that, based on that sales tax because the sales tax we're collecting is far more than is needed to service the 100 million dollars bonds that were sold.

But the idea would be we're staggering the bonds sales so that the interest does start running from day one on the bonds.

We're probably year one, year three, year five, the rest of them.

So good deal.

Well, yeah, we need to make sure and update that disclosure in there and you buy the years.

Oh, yeah.

But since there are sales tax breeds, there aren't any there aren't any covenants that amount to so the one of the things about having that 100 million dollars, you know, it's sales tax as part of it's part of our governmental funds within the Act for it.

So uh there's a major fund determination that's a quantitative calculation, which having a hundred million dollars sitting there is gonna throw those calculations way up.

So there's something that we were we were talking about uh yesterday.

Is you know, we've had some which which major funds are are we gonna present?

Yeah, we have an opportunity to show things that that aren't major funds, they don't mean necessarily meet the quantitative threshold, but we may want to just designate them as major as well.

So it gets a little complicated trying to shift those things, you know, it goes from the front page way in the back, and we're moving things around and there's presentation issues, and so um so that's something that we need to kind of think about.

It also affects their auditing scope, so it's something that we need to nail down here in the next couple days, but that sales tax fund is gonna cause some, you know, how we want to.

How won't this affect the financials?

Well, you know, certainly uh I think you know, I know that um uh from the standpoint of just transparency more disclosure, just more consistency of disclosure, same same information you see is always better, and even if it's beyond the the minimum required, it's better.

And I know the board members always want information presented as much as possible so that citizens can look at it and and make their own judgments about financial conditions of the city, not that not that it's uh uh not difficult for them sometimes based on uh how many pages there are in the report and that sort of thing, but uh still the information's there, and and if they have questions, you know, you can point to where the answer is.

I mean, I think uh probably the the decision points that we'll have to make would be do we move the lofty contribution to the back as part of the non-major because it's quantitatively not gonna be in that ballpark.

Um the grant fund when we had the the the uh COVID, the CARE Act money, um it was it we had been reporting that as major.

Now that that money is all spent, that's no longer so those I'm kind of thinking those two funds will just move to the back.

And and I you know, I think the lock is more what the remaining liability is, and that shows in the footnote anyway.

It doesn't show it.

It's not even part of the fund balances, yeah.

Well, and just based on you know, again, basically based on the stock market, it should be another really good year on the lofty side where the uh where the earnings are really good, the liability goes down, and the future contributions go down.

So that it's going in the right direction as long as we don't uh have a big drop off in the stock market, and honestly, no one's anticipating that at this point.

So yeah, I I just had something that popped in my head when you talked about those bond issuances that I just wanted to say so y'all can keep what we've seen an uptick in um in arbitrage liabilities related to bond issuances lately because the funky interest rates going up and down and stuff.

Yeah, so there's been a lot of our clients that I haven't seen over my 25, 29 year career that are having to write checks the IRS because they're holding those bond 90s for a long time.

So just keep that on your radar because it's it's happening.

It's happening.

So that's the odd.

Go to AEP now.

Thank you.

Yeah, all right.

So we we you know, kind of the same deal.

I think when I talked to you all at last, I you know, I told you we had to give them a couple months.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Like it you just got moved.

Yeah, a couple months to get ready.

So we have done that.

Um I have a dedicated Francis here, he's working on the project.

So he's he's in the audit room with us, but he's not working on the audit.

He's working on this project uh for you all.

So uh we we have you know, as you know, you from the contract, we worked with Amanda on developing the procedures to ensure that that we're meeting all of your objectives that you want us to achieve uh during this project.

So they have uploaded, you know, we set we set the uh how we exchange information up through an electronic portal.

We set them up like we would an audit, even though they're not being audited by us.

So we are exchanging information.

Uh that it works the same way, you know, our procedures require us to sample several things.

So what we what we are doing right now is we are accumulating all the information, picking our samples.

Um, we did have a call with with management of Parrot Island on Tuesday.

Uh we invited Amanda to set on that call.

We have all agreed that we're gonna have a call every Tuesday morning at 8 30 until we get this project done.

So we we set Tuesday, so Amanda could could be on the call and she can report to the board on Tuesday evenings.

So we did Tuesday mornings, so Amanda is is you know, it's completely transparent.

She can hear everything that we're talking about, she can ask questions, she can do whatever, and then she can report it to you all on Tuesday evenings.

So the the first one was this past Tuesday.

Yes, they seem to go okay.

Well, I mean, yeah, yes, from what we asked on the call, it did.

I mean, we we are just getting started on this project.

So we we have not we're not in a position right now to talk if there's any variances or anything.

Um they've probably given us about 70 to 80 percent of what we've initially asked for.

Um so a lot of stuff for us to do right now.

Um we're still working on some of the accrual type stuff, you know, where where they would accrue accounts payable, accounts receivable.

We're still working on getting information on that so we can perform the procedures that you all ask us to perform.

But so far, um, they seem to be working.

I think our on our cause going forward, um, we're gonna have five or six of them on the call from their national team, their their CFO is gonna be on the call with us.

Um so it's gonna allow us to kind of go past the local people are here in Fort Smith and and talk to the the accounting and finance people at their national who are ultimately responsible for it.

Okay, so 70 or 8%.

We had a call.

Um you know, we're we've also instructed my staff, you know.

Normally, the the the auditing standards require us to put things in the file where an experienced auditor can come along and tell what you're doing.

We're going way, way beyond that as far as our documentation to this file.

So uh what I anticipate doing is is having everything in this file and going through it with a fine-tooth comb with any of you all who are interested, the committee itself is fine.

I mean, I'm gonna have all the documentation in there to where we're basically performing the procedures that you ask us to.

We're gonna present you with the information which allows you to make an informed decision on whatever you want to do.

So that's that's that's kind of an update.

I I would say it's going well so far.

What's your timeline on being able to present us with something?

Um I think we talked about trying to present it around the same time as the the audit last time.

Is that is that acceptable?

June, May, June.

I mean, we've we have um I think that's fine.

I mean, there we already did agree to that uh being the management company for the remainder of the year.

So I mean I that would work.

I I can tell you that we're not gonna set idle on this at any point in time.

So I have him, we're we're dedicated to working on this until it's done.

Um so it's not gonna be it if if we do this three weeks and we still have a lot left to do, and I'm not getting cooperation, I will report that to Amanda, and she can report to you all, or I can come back and talk to you about it whenever.

Uh you know, on your initial phone conversation with paradise, would it be okay for you to tell us who you spoke to who was on that call in Paradise and how that conversation went?

Yeah, I spoke to to Drew Drew Peterson.

Dude Peterson, the the the it's my understanding kind of runs it very GM G.

Yeah, he's the GM.

So I yeah, I think the conversation was it's been it's been good so far.

You know, they're very receptive to of what we're what we're asking, what we're trying to we're trying to accomplish.

Um you know, after we start making samples and and doing getting into the nitty-gritty of performing the really, you know, those procedures are pretty detailed, okay.

So it's gonna require some effort for them to get us what we need to get y'all what you need, right?

So I'm not in a real good position to tell you it, you know, I the conversation went well Tuesday, but this was our first day of really looking at the data, other than calls back and forth for the past couple months just clarifying things that we were asking, but our initial initial request was to have this ready for us.

Yes, don't fix me.

Because if he was he'll stand off, sure or not, no, no, not all it would kind of let us know that you know going forward that it we might go into some problems.

I haven't seen that so far.

Good.

And you know, even when we identified things that were not provided yet, we got a couple of them within an hour from another staff member at R.

So, you know, I I it it's it's a I don't want to say it's complex work, but I mean it's very transactional what we're doing, you know.

We're we're crunching a lot of numbers, we're you know, so there's a lot to unpack there as far as like okay, well, how do you how do you go from somebody walking through the gate with the water park to ultimately making it in their financial reports that they provide you?

So there's a lot to that.

There's a lot that we have to understand how that works so we can put it in a way where you all can understand it.

Yeah, like the has a question.

Was it just Drew on the call or was it was the financially through this is true?

So coming going forward, you'll have the folks from corporate on.

Okay, yeah, I mean, I I he you know, we we asked for a couple of um options on timing, and the reason I know the CFO is gonna be on there is he said well you forwarded me an email and said Tuesday morning to be good, and then afford expanded so which one of these days will work, and she suggested Tuesday mornings so she could update you all Tuesday evenings.

Well, the timing just you know, if it goes well and you get what you're trying to accomplish and we get everything, I mean don't feel like you have to wait for the audit.

Yeah, no, no, uh we can move forward.

No, we're we're not we're not gonna wait.

I mean, we're we're plowing ahead, and and I know I know there's interest in this from everyone from you all, and and so this is a very high priority for our firm, and I think it you know, so far it's a high priority to them from what I've seen so far.

Thank you.

Now we still have a lot of numbers to crunch, okay?

So I I'm not please don't conclude anything from this.

You know, this is a planning call, and I'm just kind of updating you on our initial plan.

So I had a couple of questions just for you all as the auditors, but just wanted to clarify.

Um, you know, doing these are two separate distinct engagements, and so you don't feel like there's any conflict of interest with doing one and review both of them.

No, I'm no.

No, we we have extensive, I mean they're paying extensive quality control procedures out from you know, we're we're top aid firm in the country, right?

So we're not gonna do anything to jeopardize our reputation or anything like that.

I mean, stuff happens occasionally, but I mean, we no.

Our contract was extensively reviewed, it probably took me five or six hours to get through those procedures with my audit quality leader.

Um, she she reviewed all of them and then it goes to my managing partner.

We have lots of you know mechanisms to ensure that we're not doing anything that we don't need to be to do.

You know, the the way that I look at this, and I don't want any misunderstanding.

This is a very simple way of putting it, but what I'm doing is I'm taking A plus B equals C.

If it doesn't equal C, I'm gonna write a finding up, and then I'm gonna tell you all here's the finding, and then if you want to go collect that money from them, that's on you.

Okay, so I'm doing exactly what I was told to do from you all in our contract.

Now, if there's if there's things, you know, like uh for instance, you know, one of our procedures was was talking about a bank, a bank account.

So our our procedures were around one bank account because we didn't know that there was two or three.

Now that we know that we're gonna go back and say, hey Amanda, you know, they've got a payroll account.

Do you want that included in here?

And what we will do is we will modify those procedures so when you all sign the final representation letter in our report, it'll include those.

But we're not gonna go do that extra work without talking to you all without getting to go ahead from you all.

So essentially the way to look at this is we are an independent body from you all, but we are doing exactly what you tell us to do.

Unlike the audit, where we don't have to do exactly what you all tell us to do, right?

It's our audit.

This is this is not an attest engagement, it's an AUP.

You know, we're agreeing on all these procedures.

Our two parties, our firm and you all are agreeing that you all want us to go perform these procedures.

So really, it's it's it's a transactional, there is thought involved in it.

I don't want to I don't want to oversimplify it, but really if there's any decisions on hey, we don't know how to treat this, we don't know how to report this, we're not gonna make those decisions, we're gonna go to you all.

Thank you.

I appreciate you just clarifying that so everybody were clear on that.

And then I'm just also wanted to ask there's been no scope limitation placed on you offer either the audit or for the agreed upon procedure as far as anything that you're limited in that you can't even like.

No, there's the way that that would work in the AUP specifically.

For example, if you told me to do something and I went to them and they said that's impossible for me to do, I would write that up as a finding, and then you all can determine what you want to do with it.

But no.

Thank you.

Any other questions for them related to the external audit or the AUP?

Thank you very much.

All right.

Um, the audit department update.

And Amanda, I'm just gonna kind of turn this over to you.

And fantastic.

We can uh ask questions at well.

Absolutely.

At any time if y'all have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer those.

Um I want to give you a little bit of insight for just a minute of what the idea was behind this.

Um you can see there's PowerPoint up here.

There are certain things when we talk about the internal audit standards, things that I as the director are supposed to tell, you know, this committee, tell the board.

Uh so some of those we've started, we're gonna keep adding those in, but we're gonna try and keep this basic outline going forward so that you all as the committee kind of have an expectation of what you should see, and that we don't just accidentally forget something and not include it in here.

So this is the format.

So if y'all have any feedback after we get done with this, I'm more than happy to hear that modify this as we need to go.

Uh, but first question that I thought you might have is what has internal audit been doing over the last three months since we met.

Um, so one of the big projects we had early on in the year is to conduct uh fraud awareness training and get conflict of interest forms recompleted for everyone who's an employee of the city.

Um, so that's uh keeping that fraud awareness top of mind, providing a means for the employees to do reporting if they see something.

So we remind them, yes, there is a hotline, um, it's available.

Here's a QR code that you can scan with your phone and fill everything out right there if you need to.

Um so this is a lot of meetings.

You can see up there, 70 meetings.

Um, it's a lot of meetings, but there's uh if you think about how many people there are at the city, how many different departments there are, or spread out everywhere.

We went to Mountainburg to uh visit those folks out there.

Um so from a travel perspective, it's tough to get everybody in the same spot.

Uh, I think we'll be able to do it a little bit better next year.

We're thinking about ways to improve that process.

Um, and so not everybody's able to attend that.

You know, if you're on vacation, you've got conflicts, it's tough to get a thousand people all to do this.

So uh these numbers are as of last week, um 900 almost 950.

We've whittled that down some, we've gotten some more of those forms, um, and I think we're less than 40 remaining.

Yep, 30.

Something around there.

So huge accomplishment, I feel like from our team.

Um, and we are gonna try and make this go better next year.

Um so also one of the things that um we do actually we're supposed to be reporting on is our trainings.

Um are we getting our CPE, which is the continuing professional education.

Um, and you know, when you look at the standards, having those credentials, not just a bunch of letters after your name, those actually mean something.

Um, it shows that you're a professional that you're taking this seriously.

Uh so David did point this out earlier, but um, I passed the CIA exam, which is the certified internal auditor.

Now, because I was a CPA, I did actually only have to take one test.

So that was that made it a little bit easier for me to do that, so don't be thinking it's too impressive.

Um, but Christy, you know, she's not a CPA, so she's passed two of the three tests so far.

So she's on her way.

Uh very good.

Um, and so then here on the right-hand side, we kind of see these are the hours required for CPE, minor 40, uh 20 and 24, 20 hours, and you can see that we we're on our way to getting there.

Um, and I will point out that about seven and a half hours of the training so far was a fraud day of training uh that the um ACFE put on.

Sorry.

So we are kind of focused in on that to make sure that we've got fraud top of mind that we're keeping up with what the latest things that are happening, um, exit real life examples that are going on so that we can recognize that as we come across it.

I have a question on the conflict of interest forms.

Um it seems likely to me that you would get back forms from people whose families or relatives of some kind are involved in some business that does business with the city.

So I'm interested in how those are evaluated, how they're reported to people in the city who need to know about those things.

So we we do right now the process is their paper forms, and there's a spot on there to talk about family members who work for the city.

There's also spots for does that person have a second job or own a business or have family members that own businesses that contract with the city, so there's some sort of service goods being provided.

Um so we put that information in the spreadsheet and we provide that to management.

So that's the current process.

I think that we'll probably evaluate whether that's good, bad.

Can we do it better?

Is it overkill?

I think right now some of the information we've been gathering was probably a little too much.

We're spending a little bit too much time on it.

So from an efficiency standpoint, we're gonna roll back some of that because it was kind of redundant.

If we need information about that employee, we can go ask the HR department and they can provide it for us.

So it's not something we necessarily need to be collecting, but good question.

So the next section that I want to talk about is you know, I think that we were very excited to get the audit plan out there, and we wanted to just start doing audits.

But one thing that we really ran into is well, what does that look like?

And as we were digging into the standards, you know, it's there's a lot of required items on there.

Um we will say that those standards, you know, they were kind of uh when the codification happened with standards with the county standards that kind of just like well, let's not start all over, but let's do a refresh, let's move some things around.

That it was a really big change in the internal audit standards.

Um so there's some a lot of things that are the same, a lot of things that are new.

So when I'm looking at that, thinking from a risk perspective as the the head of internal audit, how do I make sure that we're doing all these things before we go and start doing some audits?

I felt like we need to slow down and let's write some steps because you'll appreciate this, David.

BKD where I started was let's have a form for this, let's have a form for that, and a form for this.

And so I went back to my roots, and I made a ton of Excel spreadsheets.

Uh so I do want to look at those.

I don't have them on the screen.

Um they're in the packet that you have, they're kind of the back part of it after the PowerPoint.

And so I wanted to go through some of these with you, not in a lot of detail.

You're more than welcome to ask questions.

There's a lot of information in here.

I don't want to bore you too much.

Um, but this first page, and there are uh page numbers down at the bottom, so it's just right after the PowerPoint.

It's got a lot of uh information on here, and this is kind of an outline of when I look at an internal audit file that uh Lacretia Christie has put together.

What should I see there?

Um, and so this not only kind of gives them a roadmap of what they should be including in the file, it also gives me a way to look of well, are we missing something?

And so it really helps reduce that risk that we haven't done something we should be doing.

Um, so this is some of these things have templates, some of them are so specific to individual audits, we can't really make a template, it will just be whatever we gather for those.

The next page, the page number two text gets even smaller.

I'm sorry, there's a lot of stuff on here, but um the three things that I have here basically are checklists, and so the first one is a checklist for planning.

So, what we're gathering information, we're looking at what we've done in the past for internal audit, uh research of what other cities have done, what are some you know uh maybe standards in that area that we're auditing, um, and then what are the internal controls around that area?

So we're this is where we're deliberately taking time to gather information.

Uh, we're gonna talk with management and see get their perspective on things and really use that information to develop our audit plan, our audit program is what it's called here, where we're literally writing the procedure steps very similar to the agreed-upon procedures where we're saying we're gonna think about it beforehand and say these are the steps A, B, C, D, that we need to do to have an effective audit.

So that's what this first checklist is really pushing us to do is get us through that planning phase, and then on page.

So page four is where we're looking at, okay.

We've said we're gonna do this, so now we're gonna one actually do it, and two report on it, because that report is the tangible thing that we're gonna talk about here at this meeting that we're gonna put on the city's websites that we're gonna bring to a study session and talk with the overall board.

So these steps are making sure that we have done everything in our testing file, that we've got it kind of reported somewhere.

Uh and one of the things that we're gonna do is have a spreadsheet, cell spreadsheet, where we're gonna list our individual findings, pull those out of our working papers, put them in the separate area, look at them and say, are any of these similar?

Is there when we're just looking at them individually and here as a group as we're thinking about it?

Are there themes that are rising to the top?

Are any of these related to the same root cause when we ask ourselves what went wrong?

Why did this happen?

And if the answer to those are similar, we're gonna group those together.

So as in the past, we've seen audit reports that have been issued that we're just kind of listing out everything that went wrong.

We're gonna go a step further than that and try to give more insight of what happened, why did it go wrong?

These things are all related.

So that's part of what we're doing here in this section.

The next checklist is on page seven, and this is where we've got a checklist to say this is for the report.

Did we include everything that we should in the report?

Um and this first section is really that initial drafting.

So this would be from the staff level.

So Christy Lucretia taking that first attempt at drafting the report.

Um, if you flip over to the next page, page eight, there's a section for uh my review.

So that CAE, if you see that CAE review, uh that's the chief audit executive, so that's me and my role.

So this is again a second level of did we include everything in the report that we should be including in the report, and that goes halfway on to the next page, page nine.

Um halfway through here we have a quality and proofreading review because and I keep looking at you guys, but you know how you get so familiar with something whenever you're working in it, you're making changes.

So if me and Chrissy are working on this report and we've been working on it for a week, two weeks, we're very familiar with it so easily, we can just look past those errors.

So, since we're only a three-person team, we're gonna have the third person who's coming in this cold, take a look at the report, and knowing what they know, because you know, we we talk as a group fairly often, they have an idea of what's happening, they can look at this, and from just a proofreading standpoint, did we spell everything correctly?

Is the sentence structure correct?

But then taking that other look to say, are we missing something?

Uh do we are we on the right track here?

So that is they're very um preliminary.

I'll say that.

We I suspect that whenever we get into the details, we actually start doing these, we're gonna find ways that we're gonna modify these.

Um so if you've taken the time to read all of them, bless your heart.

I appreciate it.

Um, but if there is any feedback, more than welcome to have that.

But I do want to, the very last thing in this handout is kind of the outline of the report.

So what are you expecting to see when we do issue an audit report?

Um, one thing that's been new with the the whole city of federal ADA accessibility requirement came out.

So we've kind of used that, which I actually found was helpful for us to help structure this to make sure we have headings that are easily followed that that ADA accessibility has in here to make it more readable than our reports have been in that in the past.

So here, page 11 at the bottom, we've got an executive summary.

So this first page of the reports that you'll see are going to be pretty unique to each individual audit.

It's gonna have a quick snapshot of if someone wants to look at this report, what are the most important things that they should take away from it?

That's what's intended to be here in this executive summary.

As we go into it, um the audit report, so page 13 at the bottom, or one of 10 in the middle there.

This is the audit report.

So it's actually the the meat of it.

And the sections that we have here, the engagement background, that's really saying what did we audit.

The next section methodology was more like how did we audit that?

The summary of results and findings is pretty explanatory.

Those are the results, that's what we found.

And then at the bottom there, the conclusion.

What's the takeaway from this audit?

If you flip over to the next page, there's a spot for acknowledgement to say who in management helped us because it's not just us doing the work on these audits, it's a lot of input from management, a lot of help from them.

Um and then this last section here, I do want to highlight this.

So under me back up and say, under the old standards, if you were not following internal audit standards, you just couldn't say you were following the standards in your report.

So now with these new standards, you have to say if you're not following those standards and and what is it, which standard is it that you were not complying with.

So right now we're not in compliance with the standards because we don't have what we call here a QAIP, which is the quality assurance and improvement plan.

And we're gonna talk about this a little bit more in just a few minutes.

Um, but it's really saying, are you having an assessment done by typically me, the the director?

And then as you're doing your assessment on the audits that you're issuing, you also need to have this plan to improve.

Uh so right now we do not have one of those as internal audit.

We didn't previously have it.

Um it was a requirement previously, but it's one of those things that the department didn't have that.

Um really when you were if you were to ask what was the methodology of internal audit, we really didn't have anything documented there either.

So these checklists that we went through earlier, that's me getting us into compliance so that we have that quality.

We have we can reproduce these things.

We can uh make sure that we're following all of the standards.

So this is getting us to the position where we can have this improvement plan and set that up going forward.

So I'm gonna pause there and I ask do y'all have any questions specifically about that?

We've got we've got a time to get the QA in place.

It's a great question.

We are gonna cover that here in a little bit.

Um, but I I knew you were gonna ask that question, and then I have something ready for you.

Okay, great.

Any other questions before we get onto that?

Yeah, I was just a couple of comments.

Um I really like the structure of getting programs in place and things that everybody in the department can follow.

Um I also like when you talk about kind of the findings being looked at for commonality, because like for instance, you know, it may have something in its a training issue, so it's not necessarily an error or something intentional that somebody wasn't trained properly, and so we have five findings that are just because we didn't have the proper training in place as an example.

So I like that that we can kind of then get more into the root cause of what's causing the issues or what we're not doing rather than just reporting a binding and being you know done with it.

Um so I do like that, and I wanted to specifically just ask the audit committee on the template of the report that she just kind of went through.

Um this is something that I feel like we as a committee have been asking for kind of this executive summary so that we have a one page that we can really see what uh what we did, what we found in very high-level terms, and then go to the more detailed the full report.

So I would like if there's any feedback or anything on that, but I know it's a working process, and uh maybe make changes we go, but I would like to make sure that we're all okay with that format, and uh like that way because we can't really issue reports until we know what we're what they're gonna look like in our format.

So and I will I I did also forget, and that reminded me when we go past um further on here, there's even there's gonna be even more details, so each individual finding or the groups of finding that are that are common, they're gonna have their own section where you get even more detail about that particular finding of that root cause, why is it important, how are we going to correct it, management says this, and then a determination of is this a big enough issue that we need to include it on a future audit plan as a follow-up to make sure that management does what they say that they're going to do that?

All right.

Anything else, Dina?

So the the next one question.

Let me ask one question on this.

So in terms of management's response to your finding.

Now the the way I read this needs to actually incorporate within this report, right?

Yes, that it will be part of the findings.

So their responses are on the findings, not necessarily on the internal audit report, that section of the internal audit report as ours and ours alone.

Right, sure, sure.

Yeah, but but it it is important that there be a response.

Um, and and you know, we've uh we've always had I think had a policy that there a response was required, it's been in many cases very slow at those, and um in areas where you find have several fines.

Um I think one of the things that we've all noted in the past is we weren't sure, and I think this is true of the entire committee.

We we didn't we didn't have a way to know if if the um findings had been corrected.

Now it it's uh there was a process of doing follow-up audits to check those, but ultimately there was you know kind of a flood of things that needed to be audited, and the follow-up audits always tended to be uh there wasn't much time to do those.

So I just think about that because I think that in a lot of these areas if the findings are corrected in the proper way, then you won't have to go back to that area for a long time.

Right.

You do the new areas if and so that that brings up a great point.

Just because we're not doing an official follow-up audit, the standards tell us that we still have a responsibility to see if management does what they say they're doing, and we have a responsibility to share that with the audit committee.

Uh so that will be part of the normal updates.

That's one of those things that we will be incorporating.

And in the findings, there is an estimated date that we're we're asking management to give us so that we know when to go ask them and say, Hey, have you done this yet?

And then that will prompt the reporting to the audit committee.

We'll have a date in the finding section so that you'll have an expectation of when you'll get a response or some sort of update from us about that process.

Okay, good.

Well, I one more general comment.

It is important that the relationship you have with the um now acting uh city administrator, that there's an awareness on his part that um he has a role in making sure that your recommendations are addressed.

I don't know whether you've tried to establish that yet under the circumstances, but but you know we we've had we had issues in the past with uh recommendations that were not fully agreed to, so that nothing's done, and and certainly we need to avoid that going forward.

If there's a solid recommendation or something that needs to be changed through approve, a process, a process or a procedure, then that recommendation needs to be carried out so long as it's uh the the cost there's a proper cost-benefit relationship.

And and that is part of what so if you go back and look at some of the reporting section and then that checklist, there's a process that we've set up, which we haven't done yet because we haven't finished in the audits yet, to talk to management to figure out one figure out who we need to be even be talking to.

So is that the city administrator that needs to be included in that talk with them, get that response from them, have a meeting, document all of these things, and then also through that process of saying, hey, this is when the audit committee is going to be, we're going to be talking about the audit that affects you, that you have your signature in here that you say that you agree with the wording that's in the audit, uh, and then also to say, hey, this is when we're going to take it to the study section if you want to be there to answer questions that might come up in the study session when we talk about this.

Um, and so that's not only increasing transparency with what internal audits doing, but it's also going to allow management, you know, if they have a problem.

So you mentioned training before.

Uh was it a budgetary constraint that we couldn't get training for that?

That will give management an opportunity to come before the committee before the board and say, you know, we we could avoid this if we had this training, and this is my idea of how to do that.

So there could be situations where there are limitations that management can fully correct an issue.

And so that's where that conversation with management so that we really understand what the root causes are and how to fix it.

There might be certain things that we just can't fix right now, and that will be reflected in the audit.

Anything that stands out to you.

Well, you know, it there were just uh I think of utilities and and there were um recommendations made for that department that were not really agreed to by uh utilities department, and it was never resolved whether whether there was a problem with the some particular part of the recommendation, or whether utilities just disagreed because they didn't like the idea, and the city administrator just kind of stood off to the side and and it was never resolved.

I think you know, I think we we saw that we saw those things, and other members of the committee from time to time would raise issues with the city administrator that you know your part of your job is to make sure this gets resolved one way or the other, and then and it could be that the audit recommendation is missing an important fact that wasn't disclosed to them, so they reached the wrong conclusion, or that uh there's something that something else that the who's ever in the utility department knows that would affect the recommendation, but it just was left unresolved, which is very frustrating to everyone on the audit committee, and you know, we kind of have a fresh start here.

I think we have a chance to avoid that kind of thing, and I think Christy would say she's seen and increased to some degree, seen those kinds of things uh happen in the past.

So we're we need to try to say, no, we're gonna we're gonna do away with those.

And and that's that's part of my goal about having those specific times where we have to talk to management because when you're doing an audit, you know, you you have those conversations that come up, but to set aside the special time to say we're gonna talk about every single finding that we had, and we're gonna get your thoughts on it so that nothing falls through the cracks.

I mean, that's why we're we're putting that in that separate area so that we make sure that we have those conversations.

So if there is something that comes up, there's an opportunity for them to come at the table and and speak up and share those things.

Um findings and something they want to say, kind of made me think um ours when reporting things, you know, and you have you know, we all get tied down into numbers and such like that.

But if you have, you know, you found two exceptions or something like that, just try to be conscious of doing us what the population is, because if we have two out of a thousand, that's different than happen two out of four.

So just try on that.

And then also, and I don't know as we kind of go through that.

Sometimes you'll have like if it's a some of its judgment, but like if you have a critical finding, like these are things that hey, we really need to fix this one way or the other versus things that yeah, maybe it's a training issue and we need to look at that down the road.

But just you know, if there's any kind of a decision of a really high level finding versus something that you know, we can probably prioritize other things that we top that's and and part of what we're doing in that we're we're gonna assess that that exactly what you need there.

Um so the very first item on the the individual findings.

Um there, it's page 15 in the bottom left-hand corner.

It's gonna have we're gonna we're gonna risk rate them to say, is this a big deal or is it not such a big deal?

And the ones that are the big issues, we're gonna put them first.

So every finding is gonna have its own separate section.

The really bad ones are gonna go first, so that whenever you're just naturally flipping through the report, you'll see those ahead of the less important ones.

So Amanda, when I came on, when I when I came on the audit committee, we were bama was saying we were we were tackling a lot of this stuff because we weren't getting the responses out.

So did we have a we finalize a process that says if she's not you know, there's there's two answers to every question.

There's an answer, and then there's the answer, you know, which is you know, you can somebody's asking a question, you say yeah, and then you say I answered the question, but then there's the answer that says these are the details behind it and why.

So a lot of the times in when we when I first came on the committee, we were getting the yes answer, yes.

And we weren't getting the details on that, and then I know we talked when when George was on there, we talked about how to how to get some of this stuff in there now.

The committee's obviously her report to the committee's part of it, but if she's not getting the support she needs from this the administration, then is her what is her what is her recourse to try to drive that forward?

Uh because I can't remember, I don't think we ever set up uh a program around that.

I don't want to get off into the email.

You're right.

But what is her, what is her because I mean I really like what she's done.

Okay, this is that this is really this is good work that's gonna help drive a lot of good stuff down the road.

There's gonna be pushback on this because one, it takes time, two, it makes people have to think about the answers and have to think about what they wanted by the time you answer all the questions, you're gonna get more than this.

So, what is her what what is her options when things aren't getting answered back or the follow-ups not being done that she finds well?

I don't think that's responsibility board.

You know, the board needs to follow up with uh Amanda if you're not getting any kind of assistance from administration, you know that let your board members know.

Uh I don't think any of us have a problem uh asking administration, you know why are we not making moves or any reason why we're not making any kind of move on the recommendations given?

Well, I think that's that falls on the board.

Yeah, I mean I think I think you've got to make sure you can reach out to us individually.

Um not just me or not just Christina.

We've got to make sure that that's communicated across across the board because we gotta know because it I mean it's our responsibility to make sure that that gets done, and so uh we want to make sure that that does happen.

Um did we ever at some point ever talk about whatever these are and maybe we have when these audits are done that you're always coming to the board, there's not a whether it be in a study session or whatnot.

Is that I don't think groups would be have, I mean, our um auditor you know can be several times with frustration to know that no action was ever taken, right in communication, so I don't and I it's I don't think it's a requirement, but it is what I plan to do.

That is my plan is to take these audits to the a study session, so going beyond just here in this committee because we don't have a lot of uh community involvement in these because it's kind of dry subject matter, who wants to talk about audits.

Um thank you all for being here very much.

Um but I also do want to point out um to your question there, the way that internal audit is set up here from a governance standpoint, so set up here at the city, is that ideal setup where you know I'm not reporting to city administration so that they can, you know, if we're giving them a bad report card and I'm reporting to city administration, they could you know keep that under wraps.

So having that direct communication with the board, that's who I report to.

That is the ideal uh for internal audits that is talked about in the standards.

One thing, and not we may talk about it, just we can add it or things that one thing that I think is a key importance to internal audit is building that teamwork with the departments and educing them about what you're doing, that it's not a gotcha, you're not trying to get anyone, we're trying to help improve the city.

And so I think continuing to have that communication with the departments as you work through this, what the goal is that we're all working for the same goal, we're not trying to hurt or harm anyone.

That's right, because number one goal of internal audit is to make the whole organization better.

So it's it's not to get anybody in trouble, it is to look at what's happening and help because sometimes things things happen, things go wrong, and you just don't really know why.

You've got a thousand other things that that department head is doing that they have under their watch, and maybe internal audit can help figure that out, can help relieve some of that burden to help figure out well, what is the problem?

We'll go talk to the individual people and find that, whereas the department head and other circumstances just doesn't have the time to do that.

So that's my goal is to be a help, a helping friend that you can turn to whenever you're frustrated to help make things better.

Um whether that happens, there's a lot of challenges to it, but that's my ideal scenario.

Good approach.

All right, so we will see my injects will go forward with that will be kind of our working template for the reports going forward.

Okay.

So the next section, and this um this talks to some of your questions.

The um the standards talk about the maturity level of an internal audit department, and they they don't the standards themselves don't say specifically, but what they're looking at is you know, the ideal, and so when we talk about ideals, it should go beyond just are we conforming with standards, but are we optimizing the function exceeding stakeholders' expectations and really making sure that internal audit is functioning well?

Um so we've kind of put together, and I will have a disclaimer, co-pilot helped me with this a little bit, uh, but we did go back and check these against standards.

But these are kind of that maturity level of what an internal audit department looks like.

So this this first level one, uh, this is where I would say we were uh previously as an internal audit department.

Um it's in that initial state, it's ad hoc.

Um there's no formal processes, formal uh documentation.

The work really depends on the level of that individual auditor.

The audit files all look differently.

Uh there's not really uh policies and procedures that you're following, and there's a limited amount of review.

So that's that's the category where I would say where we were previously.

Uh the next level, number two, is in that developing stage.

So is this work repeatable?

Is it less on the individual auditor and their experiences, and more we do we have an established methodology?

So you know, these forms that we were just looking at, so that each individual auditor knows what's expected of them, has all of these things documented in the file, and there's a review.

So as we're standing up this methodology, I think we're solidly here in level two.

Um so the next level three, what that looks like is okay.

We've got our methodology, it's being done over and over again, it's repeatable.

Things are getting better.

You're getting more efficient, you're putting out more audits, there's timely feedback to the audit committee.

So that is, you know, when we're looking at how long that's going to take about 12 to 18 months.

Can we get there a little bit faster?

I hope so.

But we're that's my goal is that we're getting there.

That's that's our you know, I'm gonna call it short term because the next one is longer term.

So level four here is where we really want to be.

So I think that we can very easily get to number three.

I want us to get to number four as much as we can.

So that section looks more like is internal audit well respected.

Um is it integrated into the culture of the city, the organization?

Um data analytics is an absolute must to get to that step.

Um is there an internal audit being asked for consulting engagements or management is reaching out and asking for help.

Um, are these things measurable?

Are they being reported to the board?

Is it a developed team that has a lot of experience?

There's some challenges to getting there, um, and we're gonna talk about those in a second, but I want to talk about level five.

Um I don't know that we're ever going to get to level five.

These are for much more sophisticated organizations, um, very large companies where internal audit is trusted, they're actually changing, setting the tone for what's happening in the organization.

Very excellent influencing what's happening, really a leader in that organization.

Um, so that's very top level of internal audit.

So this this section, this bottom section of this slide, um, we got to have that QAIP.

Uh, we need to, that's that's on my list to develop that.

Um, and we do have the resources that help it's gonna help us get there.

Uh evidence of conformance, you know.

As we fill out these templates, we have this documentation, we're gonna get there.

Um effective governance, I mean, that's this part of our charter that's what we were just talking about.

We're set up the correct way, so we've got that one.

Um, and then that continuous improvement as part of our plan, we're gonna get better.

We're gonna keep reporting these things to the committee here.

So these are kind of a recap of the time frame.

12 to 18 months to get to level three, three to five years to get to a level four.

Um we're gonna be able to achieve everything in that level four.

I don't know, there's some barriers to that.

Um we've got the term upskilling here, but it's uh we're gonna keep developing those credentials, keep developing our abilities of what we can do.

Uh it's gonna be a technology investment of being able to do that uh continuous monitoring, continuous auditing, uh, and then change the culture a little bit so that internal audit is being incorporated more, not one of the bad guys, not looked at as one of the oh, don't talk to where there's the auditor, let's everybody be quiet.

Um, so really getting past that barrier is gonna be a challenge to get to this level four.

So before I move on, comments, thoughts on that.

I want to comment on something you said that you use copilot and to do this, and I've been working on something that I had occasionally to use copilot for the last month or so, and I have found it to be amazing in terms of going out and surveying a massive volume of data and coming back with a very summarized list of the really important things you need to consider.

I it is I've been really amazed.

Now, I've used some others, but some other AI things that weren't so good that I found on tax issues that it was right about 50% of the time.

But uh co-pilot in particular, I found to be very helpful, and particularly I would think on like industry best practices that you would wonder.

Well, I wonder how other cities do this particular function.

I would think that would be something that would be very useful just to see what the other side of the of the world looks like in that area.

From an operational standpoint, typically not a financial type thing.

Those financial things are a little more structured and defined, but operationally, you know, there are a thousand different ways to do some of the things that cities do operationally.

And I would think that would be helpful in some of the things you do, which tend to be more operational than they are financial.

I will say I recently told my best friend that they just got replaced by co-pilot.

The co-pilot is my new best friend.

But you're absolutely right.

I mean, summarizing that data because it has that data.

It's it's the question of can it really be complex situations?

Not so well.

Uh can you ask it specific questions and then say uh tell me where you got this information from?

Absolutely.

Really critical.

Because you need to so many times where it's technically, you have to go look at it yourself.

Yeah.

But yeah, how you frame the question often is a big is a big determinative uh factor in whether you get the information you need.

Um it can be very useful.

Well, as you're as you're thinking about developing efficiencies, that's that's the tool that allow you to be able to do it.

And and what part of what I did here was I mean, I read the standards, I have my opinion of what it's what we're looking at, what we should be doing, and it was kind of a second affirmation.

I mean, it was what I thought, but I just I want someone else to tell me that and and see if it aligns with what I'm thinking, and so that's you always gotta you always gotta validate it, but it can give you a head start and a lot of things, and give you that second opinion.

Yeah, anything else before we move on to the next section.

Uh so I anticipate we're gonna have more of these things.

Um, this is where we're really getting into our audit plan progress.

Uh so this screenshot that we have up here.

Um, this is slide number 13.

This is from uh the software that we have, the internal audit software, it's called Teammate Plus, and we've put our audits in there.

Um there's some good functions of this, there's some less good functions of it.

Uh so we're working around some of those things where we want a little bit more relying on Excel at this point.

We're gonna try and integrate it more, um, but from a progress standpoint, uh, I think we're gonna have some really good visual ways of looking at where we stand on the audit.

So uh what we have right here is we've got three audits there in that planning phase.

We've got two in the execution phase, so that's moving beyond planning.

Um, and then four of those that have that non-category are the not started yet ones.

Um then this is also a screenshot.

So in this program, we can have our scheduled start, scheduled end, and there's also areas in there that will tell us the actuals.

Um, this is just our schedules right now.

So this is plotted on a calendar from January to December.

Uh, that first one there that spans the whole year, that is our cash counts.

Uh so we did our first one at the very beginning of January, and those those uh cash counts are surprises to management because we don't want them to know that we're coming, uh, those kind of things.

Um, and we're gonna probably do a few more cash counts than we have in the past, um, hit that summertime where certain things are open in the summer that aren't in that January, December time frame.

Um so that's why that first one looks funky, but the rest of them we're trying to plot them out here so that not everything gets done at once.

Um, so this is kind of our tentative plan that we're gonna have throughout the year.

So we'll be able to look at go back to this at the end of the year and say this was our schedule.

This is what we actually did, so that you can visually see how close we are we to meeting those targets.

There's always going to be certain things that come up that prevent you from following your plan, but I I think it's good for us to have a goal to work towards to know if we're behind a schedule.

So those are the two that we have right now.

Um the last few things that I want to go over.

We haven't had anything come across that since we met last.

Uh consulting, we did some very small projects, uh consulting projects.

One of them we issued a memo to kind of give a ruling on our opinion, and then one was very informal.

Um our special projects um doing the agreed upon procedures for Parrot Island, uh, which was writing those procedures, bringing them to the board, getting those approved.

Uh and so that's our quick update on other items, and then Dina, I'm gonna turn it back to you for round table questions and recommendations.

Okay, anybody have any questions on any of the things that she just went through?

I like the kind of that we've been asking for kind of a snapshot and a dashboard to see where we stand, so I like that.

I think it'll be good going forward to nothing else keep us on track.

So I appreciate you putting that all together and good work on to all of you for getting all this together.

That's a lot of work.

So we appreciate it.

And I'll reiterate I'll reiterate what you're saying because it is there's there's a tremendous amount of work in here.

So if anybody wonders what you all have been doing since the last time we met, all they gotta do is read through this and and grasp the depth to which you're taking, and I was watching our auditors shake their heads and smiles and smiles break out.

So I'm watching their reaction as you're going through it, so they're I can tell they're they're they're following what you're saying and going along with it.

Well, I will point out I spared you.

I only put three in here.

So we could have gone over many more.

No, no, no, that's fine.

Trust me.

I can tell she is from public accounting.

Oh wow, yeah, I recognize this, this, this.

But just to break out of this, this is what we were hoping.

This is what we were hoping when we talked to you the first time that you would bring to the table with your enthusiasm and your desire for detail, and you are you are showing us that uh we all made a good decision back then to get you on board.

So congratulations to you.

Congratulations to your team because I also know it's a team effort to get all this done, but I like I like the fact that it seems like everybody's pushing in the right direction right now.

So congratulations to all of you for this hard work and fine, fine presentation that they thank you.

Um the round table questions, recommendations.

I have one thing I wanted to bring up, and just for I guess consideration, if nothing else.

Um, you know, as we've and I think parrot just the discussions on Harold Island is when I kind of started thinking about it, but you know, there's external reports, external financials that are coming from outside sources outside the city to the management to the directors, Paradon, I think we would be an example.

The convention center might be another example.

Just um I would like us to consider at least have a recommendation that those also come to internal audit monthly or however whatever the normal timing is, if nothing else for consistency, and you have someone that's a CPA or that is got a financial background that would be familiar at least with reporting and things, just so that it doesn't fall through the cracks.

Um you say come to internal audit, we mean by well, like I'm assuming they get like financial reporting.

Oh, when they get published or get sent to the city that internal audit be on that list.

Okay, I just I feel like some things may be just in transition and with position shifting around and things that some things maybe get lost lost or just don't rise at the top.

That would just for a consistency purpose like us to at least consider that, and that would kind of be a recommendation that I've been that I've got that I've been thinking of.

Okay, and the water product would be there by that, and we'll hang with that OAGU would be we did just we did um approve um to begin or to have audits on a regular basis of those external entities, not just parent island, but but um OVG and those groups so something a little more formal than just showing up at a board meeting giving us financial so we we we have agreed to that as important.

Okay, and not to add to like Amanda and then uh workload, but just something like I said that we know a consistent person is getting this and someone that would be familiar with what's being reported.

So anybody else have any round table discussion items?

No, not really, but I know the question is learning how in depth that you're wanting audit internal audit to look at these slides that come in.

I mean, I know we don't want to overburden Amanda and staff, but it sounds like depending on how in depth you want them to look.

And could be very time consuming.

Yeah, and I'm while David and them are still here.

And then B, you know, if something glance at it and something stands out, then I think they have the capability and the the um they are able to then say, hey, somebody probably really needs to ask a question, or somebody really needs to look at this.

And I will say I have looked at a lot of financial statements in my day, so I I do think that if there is anything that seems concerning that we ask that question to whoever is appropriate to ask that question to one else.

I don't necessarily want to keep that meeting held up with what we're gonna do on our normal basis.

So, what are we thinking about timing of our next internal audit section of a meeting here at the audit committee?

Do we want to try and do before June, which is not a whole lot of time, uh, but we could go after June, maybe after that July 4th holiday that week following that.

What are your thoughts on that?

David, didn't you say you were coming back with Parrot Island?

Do we say it's June?

Mid-June.

Yeah, that was my initial goal.

And like you know, we're gonna continue to work on it, so we might get it done in May.

I mean, that's my hope, you know, that it that we can you know get it get it done as soon as possible, and I'll probably know more in the next two weeks.

I I could probably like have a pretty good estimate if you give me a week or two beyond today.

I don't know if it's necessary.

I'll just want to know everyone's thoughts about you know in the next meeting on the end.

And then and then um don't forget Amanda's gonna be on my cause with them, so she's gonna hear everything we're talking about, so she'll she'll be constantly updated to communicate with you all through whatever meets.

Kind of for our regular quarterly meeting, do we want to then try to get Paragolin and the audit done in June and then look at maybe July for our next quarterly meeting that orders?

We'll do that.

Anyone else?

I can't remember.

Do I have to have a motion to adjourn?

I think I do.

So I would so move.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.