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Record of Proceedings

Fort Smith Audit Advisory Committee Reviews Parrot Island Agreed-Upon Procedures Report — August 27, 2026

Meeting Portal — Thursday, August 27, 2026
BodyFort Smith, Arkansas
SessionMeeting Portal
DateThursday, August 27, 2026
StatusFILED
Video Record
0:00 / 1:19:53

Original source
Transcript — VerbatimClick a timed line to jump · ⧉ to share it
0:05

Okay.

0:06

We're going to call the meeting to order of the audit advisory committee at 702 on August 24th.

0:13

And as we have in the past, we're going to go around the room and say your name and your who you represent for our recording.

0:21

So I'm Dina Infield and I'm the chair of the audit advisory committee.

0:24

I'm a citizen member.

0:27

Rainey Pogue, citizen member.

0:30

Amanda Strange, Director of Internal Audit.

0:53

Katie Flores, Forvis Mazars.

0:55

And I'm David Coleman with Forbes Mazars as well.

0:58

Neil Martin, board representative.

1:01

Christina Git Savas, Board of Directors.

1:08

Levon Morton, citizen member.

1:12

Okay.

1:13

Thanks everybody for being here.

1:15

We're here to discuss the Parrot Island Agreed Upon Procedures Report.

1:19

And everyone should have the updated draft of that.

1:24

Couple of things I'd like to just say before we get into the update.

1:31

So we're going to go through the updated draft.

2:03

So wanted to make everyone aware of that.

2:06

And then before we kind of start going over the agreed upon procedures, I wanted to just clarify a couple of things related to just from an educational standpoint as CPA, the what an agreed upon procedures is versus an audit.

2:20

Since we have Forvus Mazars here and our auditors and the persons that are doing this report, I thought it was good to just get on record and kind of clarify the difference in those.

2:29

So I'm happy to kind of talk about that a little bit.

2:31

David, do you want to say anything on that?

2:34

Yeah, uh absolutely.

2:36

So the difference between an audit and an agreed upon procedures is an audit, we are defined by what the standards tell us to do.

2:46

So, you know, auditing standards, GAP, which is GASBY or FASBY.

2:52

So what we do is we apply a materiality threshold to an audit and we audit in accordance with those standards.

3:01

So I think when we were discussing this initially, um it was your opinion that an agreed upon procedure would be better off because you have more flexibility in what you want a firm to do.

3:16

So how an agreed upon procedure works is you write procedures or someone from management in this case Amanda took the first stab at directing writing the procedures.

3:29

I think we discussed them uh with the audit committee as well, got your input on them, and then we list we we have a defined in this case it was three or four pages worth of procedures.

3:40

The good thing about an agreed upon procedures in something like this is you can define your scope.

3:45

So, you know, if we were to do an audit, the scope might have been $30,000 just based upon materiality thresholds or or something like that.

3:53

With an agreed upon group procedure, you can define what your scope is and what you exactly what you want us to go do.

4:02

So that's what we did.

4:03

Um that's the primary differences.

4:05

We're not issuing an audit opinion to whether or not an entity's financial statements are in accordance with GAAP.

4:13

So that's how we do an audit.

4:15

So we I was gonna say just so it's fair to say that you're performing audit procedures.

4:23

But you're performing an audit procedures on a subset of what might be a complete set of financial statements.

4:31

That's right.

4:32

Is that a fairly fair way to say it?

4:34

That is correct.

4:34

There that we are we the way that the procedures that the procedures were written where they could have been audit procedures, okay.

4:43

So but but there's certain things that you probably didn't want to pay us to do with with with Parrot Island.

4:50

So you you had kind of in your mind what you wanted us to do as an audit firm as auditors, and then you tell us to go do it.

5:00

So yes the procedures that we were that we applied to these to the financial statements oh go ahead can can we feel comfortable that the results that we see here are indicative of their operating proceed like if we see a problem here we can we can say uh Parrot Island has a problem in this particular area that they need to resolve or we need to get some extra clarification on.

5:35

Yeah so if if so for instance we we can talk about them in a minute but you hired us to go and do this and we had findings on that so those findings you can take those findings and interpret them how you want and go and and do follow-up okay action on that.

5:53

Okay.

5:54

But the the the main deal is is when we do an audit we issue an audit opinion of whether or not the financial statements are materially correct in accordance with GAAP generally accepted accounting principles.

6:10

Well and and I just want to add examples of the kinds of things we might ask for would be for them to change procedures to avoid maybe some of these differences in in the month between one set of their records and another set of their records or to provide more information in their monthly reports.

6:33

So just enhance what we get or improve their procedures.

6:37

Those could be two possible outcomes of this kind of an audit when when you take into account the fact that there's no indication here that there was any improper financial activities to try to not use the word um and or or in you didn't audit for this you never do missing funds that are just obvious the there's no evidence that but again you you don't do audits to find those things but right and and and the way that the procedures were designed I think they were designed to to pop for for the report to pop out things that that you all might be interested in.

7:21

Okay.

7:21

There's some things that we do on an audit that you don't really care about.

7:26

And and the way that they agreed upon procedures were what we what was we tried to accomplish with Amanda is to really look at the things that the committee and the board cared about does that make sense kind of and I would also add to that some of you know when David talks about scopes and materiality some of these procedures were directly written to find a one dollar difference because those things were so important to the board and their understanding of these financial statements whereas if it was an audit of a financial statements there would be that low level of materiality that would not have been covered down to the exact dollar amount.

8:11

So that was one major benefit that was there for the agreed upon procedures that were not there for an audit of the financial statements.

8:20

Right.

8:21

So I think what what you all were or what um what Amanda what we were thinking is you could really hone down the procedures and write them in a manner that you got the information that you really wanted instead of things that you did not really want that you might get from a financial statement audit.

8:44

But as LeBon stated a lot of the we're auditors right that we we we don't we we think like auditors so the procedures are written I mean in a way that an auditor would write them so there's some you know like we did a cer I think a search for unrecorded liabilities that that's stuff we do during an audit procedure.

9:06

Now if if a if a check was was paid late or something like that that's might not we might not care as much about that during an audit but we did when we were doing an agreed upon procedure because you ask us to report on it.

Discussion Breakdown — Share of Meeting
Financial Oversight███████████████████████████████████████39%
Audit and Oversight█████████████████████████████████████37%
Public Engagement███████████11%
Public Works Planning████4%
Procedural███3%
Procurement███3%
Parks and Recreation███3%
Summary of Proceedings

Fort Smith Audit Advisory Committee Reviews Parrot Island Agreed-Upon Procedures Report — August 27, 2026

The Fort Smith Audit Advisory Committee met at Blue Lion Room 2 (101 N 2nd St, Fort Smith, AR) to review the updated final draft of the Parrot Island Waterpark Agreed-Upon Procedures (AUP) report, prepared by external auditors Forvis Mazars, and to discuss next steps. Chair Deana Infield called the meeting to order at 7:02 PM. Note: The agenda, minutes, and transcript list the meeting date as August 24, 2026, at 7:00 PM, while the timestamp provided for this summary is August 27, 2026; this discrepancy is noted per accuracy rules.

Attendance

  • Committee members present: Deana Infield (Chair), André Good, Russell Bragg, Neal Martin, Lavon Morton, Christina Catsavis. Absent: Raynee Pogue.
  • City staff present: Amanda Strange (Director of Internal Audit), Christi Fisher (Staff Auditor), Lucretia Perkins (Utility Auditor), and City Administrator Jeff Dingman.
  • Forvis Mazars present: David Coleman, Katie Flores, and Fritz Balbinot.

Discussion Items

  • AUP vs. audit explained: David Coleman (Forvis Mazars) explained that in an agreed-upon procedures engagement, the committee defines the scope, unlike an audit where standards dictate the work. He noted an audit's scope might have been limited by a $30,000 materiality threshold, whereas some AUP procedures were written to catch even a $1 difference because those details mattered to the board.
  • No improper activity indicated: Coleman stated there was no indication of improper financial activities or obvious missing funds, while noting the procedures targeted areas the committee and board cared about.
  • ARM's explanations unchanged: Forvis Mazars reported that the waterpark management company (ARM) provided similar explanations for reconciling items: its accounting system produces end-of-day reports that omit certain online sales, and it also produces sales details by tax rate. A $15,000 reconciling item in July was attributed to ticket sales through GroupOn, and several line items repeated the same explanation about omitted online sales or checks from sponsoring partners.
  • Vantiv charges lacking support: In the cash disbursements section (Tables 5 F2 and F3), charges from Vantiv — the credit card processor for ticket sales — were flagged because no supporting documentation was provided.
  • Cook Elementary check: A revised procedure, tied to a question from Director Christina Catsavis, addressed the Cook Elementary check and the cashing of checks beyond five business days, with ARM's explanation included in the report.
  • Payables aging: At the committee's request, a procedure was added to report items exceeding 45 days outstanding, calculated as the invoice date minus the check date. The committee previously recommended that monthly reporting include an aging listing of payables showing whom they are owed to and the invoice date.
  • August comparison anomaly: Items were removed from page 21 of the report to create an apples-to-apples comparison. In table 9B2, August 2025 expenses were about $48,000 higher than August 2024, even though 2024 included major maintenance costs.
  • Fixed asset and capital expenditure concerns: The committee discussed Parrot Island manager Carl's treatment of repairs as capital expenditures (e.g., iron couplings used instead of aluminum to avoid rust). Lavon Morton said the size of the repair cost did not sink in until later and that the city should have had a stronger review process, similar to the consent decree process, to ensure construction met standards.
  • Written procedures and guidance: Morton emphasized the need for strong, written procedures on how capital funds are spent and reported. Coleman recommended the city provide more guidance on fixed assets, maintenance, capitalization, and depreciation.
  • Clarity question: A committee member said they were unfamiliar with a company called "Clarity" referenced in the report and suggested it was a question worth asking.
  • Future audit timing: The committee discussed whether to pursue a full audit for 2026, noting a decision should come sooner rather than later given testing requirements on construction in progress. Participants noted Parrot Island is not material to the city's financial statements (the entity is half city and half county), and the management company's reporting focuses only on its performance and compensation from Parrot Island.
  • Monitoring system: Morton and City Administrator Jeff Dingman discussed developing a monitoring system for Parrot Island and similar entities, noting complacency can develop over time.

Key Outcomes

  • Issue report as-is: Forvis Mazars recommended issuing the final AUP report with ARM's explanations included, rather than continuing to chase missing support. Chair Deana Infield stated the committee would not put more time into the item.
  • September 10 follow-up: The committee will not delay its next quarterly meeting (scheduled for September 10). ARM has the draft report and was invited to attend the September 10 meeting to provide items, suggestions, and acceptable explanations for outstanding questions.
  • Recommendations list: Amanda Strange will formalize the list of recommendations, incorporate the discussion from this meeting, and send it to the audit committee.
  • Vendor responsibility: Lavon Morton stated that if the management company cannot or will not answer questions, the city has a responsibility to find other vendors that will perform the work the way the city wants.

Meeting Transcript

Okay. We're going to call the meeting to order of the audit advisory committee at 702 on August 24th. And as we have in the past, we're going to go around the room and say your name and your who you represent for our recording. So I'm Dina Infield and I'm the chair of the audit advisory committee. I'm a citizen member. Rainey Pogue, citizen member. Amanda Strange, Director of Internal Audit. Katie Flores, Forvis Mazars. And I'm David Coleman with Forbes Mazars as well. Neil Martin, board representative. Christina Git Savas, Board of Directors. Levon Morton, citizen member. Okay. Thanks everybody for being here. We're here to discuss the Parrot Island Agreed Upon Procedures Report. And everyone should have the updated draft of that. Couple of things I'd like to just say before we get into the update. So we're going to go through the updated draft. So wanted to make everyone aware of that. And then before we kind of start going over the agreed upon procedures, I wanted to just clarify a couple of things related to just from an educational standpoint as CPA, the what an agreed upon procedures is versus an audit. Since we have Forvus Mazars here and our auditors and the persons that are doing this report, I thought it was good to just get on record and kind of clarify the difference in those. So I'm happy to kind of talk about that a little bit. David, do you want to say anything on that? Yeah, uh absolutely. So the difference between an audit and an agreed upon procedures is an audit, we are defined by what the standards tell us to do. So, you know, auditing standards, GAP, which is GASBY or FASBY. So what we do is we apply a materiality threshold to an audit and we audit in accordance with those standards. So I think when we were discussing this initially, um it was your opinion that an agreed upon procedure would be better off because you have more flexibility in what you want a firm to do. So how an agreed upon procedure works is you write procedures or someone from management in this case Amanda took the first stab at directing writing the procedures. I think we discussed them uh with the audit committee as well, got your input on them, and then we list we we have a defined in this case it was three or four pages worth of procedures. The good thing about an agreed upon procedures in something like this is you can define your scope. So, you know, if we were to do an audit, the scope might have been $30,000 just based upon materiality thresholds or or something like that. With an agreed upon group procedure, you can define what your scope is and what you exactly what you want us to go do. So that's what we did. Um that's the primary differences. We're not issuing an audit opinion to whether or not an entity's financial statements are in accordance with GAAP. So that's how we do an audit. So we I was gonna say just so it's fair to say that you're performing audit procedures. But you're performing an audit procedures on a subset of what might be a complete set of financial statements. That's right. Is that a fairly fair way to say it? That is correct. There that we are we the way that the procedures that the procedures were written where they could have been audit procedures, okay. So but but there's certain things that you probably didn't want to pay us to do with with with Parrot Island. So you you had kind of in your mind what you wanted us to do as an audit firm as auditors, and then you tell us to go do it. So yes the procedures that we were that we applied to these to the financial statements oh go ahead can can we feel comfortable that the results that we see here are indicative of their operating proceed like if we see a problem here we can we can say uh Parrot Island has a problem in this particular area that they need to resolve or we need to get some extra clarification on. Yeah so if if so for instance we we can talk about them in a minute but you hired us to go and do this and we had findings on that so those findings you can take those findings and interpret them how you want and go and and do follow-up okay action on that. Okay. But the the the main deal is is when we do an audit we issue an audit opinion of whether or not the financial statements are materially correct in accordance with GAAP generally accepted accounting principles. Well and and I just want to add examples of the kinds of things we might ask for would be for them to change procedures to avoid maybe some of these differences in in the month between one set of their records and another set of their records or to provide more information in their monthly reports.

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