The City of Jackson's Finance Committee met on February 20, 2026, to consider a proposal from Amick and Company, CPAs and Consultants, to conduct the city's audits for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Council members questioned the firm's experience, timeline, cost, and compliance with Mississippi state requirements, and voted to advance the engagement out of committee with conditions.
Okay. Good morning. It's approximately 10 08, and we're starting our finance committee meeting for the city of Jackson to discuss the audit. At this time, we're going to have questions about the proposal. And from the questions, we would move to um here from the auditor and hear from the CFO for the city. And any other questions from the mayor. Madam Chair, if you don't mind, can we hear from if you would introduce yourself, state your name and your company, please. Good morning. I am Dr. Douglas Allen with Hamming Company, CPAs and Consultants. I want to say thank you all for your time this morning. Honorable Mayor Horn and to the City Council members as well. I'm here on again on behalf of Emick and Company from Louisville, Kentucky, here to present our proposal in reference to conducting audits for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. I believe each member of the council had received the proposal. I won't cover every single page in the proposal, but I will go over some highlights and then I will entertain any questions that you all may have at that time. Thank you. Over the years, there was separation between 1980, 1985 or so. So decided to scale the firm down. And uh truly I am appreciate being here with you all this morning. We assembled a team that specifically handles municipalities with our engagement team. That myself, I as the as a shareholder, I'm very much hands-on. I will be here uh auditing uh with the field work, working closely with management, and then also with you all with council. One thing I would like to say is that this is not the first time that we've seen uh a client or potential client uh be a little bit behind uh with the audit. Okay. Uh we also like to set a plan uh for that as we've done and so in the proposal to be able to get the city caught up and get back to that certificate of excellence with the GFOA. Okay. One of the things that we've looked at is starting the 2024 audit on March the first. Okay, taking that then through June of this year, and that you will see on page 29. Page 27. So the map for 2024 for March of 26, starting the planning of the engagement. That is again, we would be on site to start preliminary field work and also documentation of internal controls. That would be through March and April, doing our interim field work. You'll see May of 26th. Uh that would be completing our year-end field work. And then report finalization in June to release the fiscal year 2024 audit by June 30th of 2026. Upon approval of that audit, we would then move right into the fiscal year 2025. We understand uh, and I've been on both sides of the house where working with management, their team. We do our best to try to stay out of the way while you all do your daily jobs, uh, but at the same token, it's about building that relationship in order to make sure things get done and get done timely. Okay. One thing we like to do is set weekly meetings, uh, progress meetings. I don't like to necessarily go backwards. We like to get, for example, we like to audit cash. Well, we like to get it done, get it signed off on so we don't have to revisit that later. All right. So it's about keeping that open line of communication, which I think is extremely important based on you know, of course, being two years of audits. Okay. There are times where we may need to speak to council members. I always address items with management first. If there is something that comes up that uh warrants additional discussion, then we will make sure we have those discussions in a timely fashion. Okay.