Audit and Finance Committee Meeting – February 3, 2026
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Audit and Finance Committee Meeting – February 3, 2026
Introductory paragraph: The Audit and Finance Committee met on February 3, 2026, to approve previous meeting minutes and receive a briefing from the City Auditor on recent audit work and data analysis activities.
Consent Calendar
- Approval of December 2, 2025 meeting minutes: Motion passed unanimously.
Discussion Items
- City Auditor Report (Patrice Randall): Since the last meeting, three audit reports and one data analysis report have been released:
- City Hall Contracting Audit: Contractors generally complied with contract terms; minor noncompliance regarding insurance was noted.
- Fort Worth Housing Finance Corp Audit: Expenses were properly reviewed and approved, but control weaknesses were identified: (1) segregated duties – some expenses were approved under a generic user ID (e.g., "administrator"), preventing identification of the actual approver; (2) blank check stock control issues; (3) documentation lacking support (e.g., bus passes issued without records of recipients); (4) lack of formal written policies and procedures. The department has begun deactivating generic user accounts.
- Tree Mitigation Fund Audit: Processes for tree canopy preparation and fee assessment/collection are in place, but the Park Department’s manual process reduces accountability (permits and receipts not pre‑numbered). Recommendation to automate. Additionally, city code for tree mitigation fees assessed by the Park Department was unclear; the department was using standard operating procedures based on a prior ordinance. Parks and Development Services should work with the City Attorney’s office to update the code.
- Data Analysis:
- Duplicate payments: One duplicate was identified and refunded; a prior duplicate from an earlier report was also refunded.
- Hotel occupancy taxes: Three hotels previously identified as non‑compliant; two have paid. Alex Lawfer (Treasurer) noted continued coordination with legal to send delinquency notices and possible referral to collection agent Lime Barger for the remaining non‑compliant hotel.
- Warranties on automobile batteries and vehicles: Some invoices were paid for batteries replaced during the warranty period. Property Management will begin reconciling NAPA billings and technicians will check for frequent battery replacement issues. For police/fire vehicles, tows may be considered for warranty coverage.
- Intranet Page Update: The City Auditor’s department is creating an intranet page to track the status of audit recommendations (outstanding, implemented, not implemented), include committee presentations, and provide audit tips. Target completion: no later than March 31, 2026.
Key Outcomes
- The committee received and discussed the audit reports and data analysis. No formal votes were taken on the findings. The meeting adjourned by motion.
Meeting Transcript
Good morning, all at this time I will call to order the meeting of the audit and finance committee. Our first order of agenda, first order of business on our agenda is approval of our December 2nd meeting minutes. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Next on our agenda is a briefing. It's the uh Patrice Randall, our city auditor discussing the audit work plan and activities that have been ongoing. Thank you, Patrice. Good morning. Patrice Randall, City Auditor. So since the last audit committee meeting, we've released three audit reports and one data analysis report. The first audit was a city hall contracting audit where we were looking at contracts to determine whether the contractors complied with the terms based on our audit results, with the exception of a minor of some minor insurance noncompliance issues, the contractors did comply with the contract requirements. We audited the Fort Worth Housing Finance Corp, and the purpose for that audit was to determine whether the expenses were properly reviewed and approved based on our test results. They were we did identify some control weaknesses. One of those was segregated duties, and in that particular instance, we had some expenses where the approver was noted as a generic under a generic user ID. An example, the approver would have been administrator. So because the user ID was not specific, we couldn't identify who approved the transaction, and so with that, we could not determine whether the duties were segregated. And again, there were only a few of those. We had control issues over the blank check stock, and there were some documentation that did not support the expenditures. Some examples would be for the uh housing support. The clients were given bus passes, and in some instances there was no support showing who received X number of bus passes valued at X dollar amount, and then the last one was formal written policies and procedures. And in reference to segregated duties, I will say that the neighborhood services department or the housing finance corp has uh begun deactivating those generic user accounts or user IDs, and we looked at the mowing contracts. These were not considered findings, but we did recommend that the contract when they um execute subsequent contracts that they include the entire property address that's being mown, so to include the unit numbers, and we also recommended that they consider competitively bidding those mowing service contracts. Uh during our audit, the vendor they had used the same vendor since like 2016, and during 2024, they had paid the vendor approximately 70,000. So we recommended potentially uh going out and competitively bidding that that contract. The last audit was tree mitigation fund. On that one, we found that the city has processes in place to ensure that the tree canopy is prepared and that they have controls in place to make sure the fees are properly assessed and collected. We did identify weakness with the uh the park department having a manual process by it being manual, there was less accountability, and an example would be they issue permits, the permits are not pre-numbered. Uh if you pay and they issue a receipt, the receipts are not pre-numbered. So we're recommending that they automate that process that those controls are in place, and we also found that the the city code was clear in reference to uh tree mitigation fees that are assessed by the planning department, but they weren't for those that are assessed by the parked department. And so what the park department did is they assessed it based on their standard operating procedures, which were based on a prior ordinance, and so we recommended that this parks and development services get with the city attorney's office and determine whether the ordinance should be updated or revised. Any questions on the audits? And then data analysis. We uh looked at duplicate payments, which is a routine test. We only identified one duplicate payment, and it had been identified by the department and had been refunded. We also followed up on a duplicate payment from a prior data analysis report, and that duplicate payment had been refunded. We followed up on hotel occupancy taxes, and in a prior prior data analysis report, we identified three hotels that had not paid their hotel occupancy taxes, and when following up, two of those three hotels had paid. And when following up, two of those three hotels had paid. Yes. On that one, was that just a sampling or a full audit? For the hotels. What are the next steps for the one that has not submitted payment? Can anyone talk to that? Alex Lawfer, Treasurer. Good morning, committee and council members. So the next steps we'll continue to coordinate closely with legal to issue delinquency notices with unregistered or non-compliant hotels and continue enforcement remedies in that regard. And if we've exhausted those enforcement remedies internally, uh and they're still unresolved, then we'll uh evaluate pursuing with our collection agent Lime Barger for further enforcement. Okay, thank you. And then we also did a test looking at warranties over the automobile batteries and just the vehicles themselves. So for automobile batteries, we found that there were some invoices the city received and paid for in for batteries that were replaced during the warranty period.
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