Welcome to business session.

Our first item is approval of minutes for business session of a month ago, May 2nd.

Is there a motion?

So moved.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor of approval, indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Motion passes.

Now we get to hear from a vital part of our city administration, the city auditor.

Fiscal year 2024 annual report.

Good afternoon, Mayor Lucas, members of the City Council, City Manager Platt, Doug Jones, City Auditor.

We normally report on the performance of city departments, programs, and activities, but today I'm reporting on our performance over the last fiscal year.

In front of you is a copy of the annual report, as well as you should have received an email yesterday with a link to the report itself and the presentation slides.

The city auditor's authority and duties as an independent audit function and mandate to audit city government and provide information to the mayor and city council is established in the city charter.

The city auditor is appointed by and reports to the mayor and city council and is independent of the city manager.

The charter grants the city auditor complete access to the books, records, and employees of the city.

Additionally, state statute authorizes the city auditor to conduct audits of the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department.

Our mission is based on our charter mandate and the government auditing standards.

We accomplish our mission through performance audits conducted in accordance with these standards and our core values of accountability, transparency, integrity, and professionalism that guide our work as government auditors.

The primary benefit of our audits is providing essential public accountability and transparency over government programs and activities.

Other benefits also include reduced or avoided or recovered costs, increased revenues, improved city services to residents as well as employees, information to facilitate decision making, and improved controls and safeguards over public monies and assets.

In fiscal year 2024, we met our increased goal of issuing nine performance audits.

Last year we evaluated the central economic development sales tax projects, governance practices of city component unit boards and commissions, police department spending from the community policing and prevention fund, governance practices of other city governing boards, and also health benefits.

The city paid for ineligible former employees, utility street cut restorations, cyber incident response plans, timeliness of the city's hiring process, as well as timeliness of PIAC projects.

Very brief summaries of each of these audits is listed in the report on page four.

In addition to the audits, we also issued three administrative reports.

Our expenditures during last year, a little over 1.2 million.

Auditing alone does not produce these benefits.

The benefits come from implementing audit recommendations, and those cannot be effective without management support.

To measure the effectiveness of recommendations we make, our goal is for 90% of our audit recommendations to be accepted or agreed to by management.

Last year we made 36 recommendations, and management agreed with 93% of those.

We also have a goal for 75% of our audit recommendations being implemented within two years of the release of an audit.

By fiscal year 2024, management reported implementing 54% of our fiscal year 2022 recommendations within two years of the audit release.

Another 2% after two years, 35% still in progress, and 8% not implemented.

Improved transparency of department's implementation of recommendations by the city auditor.

This is a new strategy in the citywide business plan under the finance and governance goal.

To begin implementing this strategy, we improved our process for requesting and tracking management's progress reports on the implementation of audit recommendations.

These are the audit report tracking system or arts reports.

So far, the new process is working, and department reports are now current.

Our next step is publishing an interactive dashboard on the city auditor's website as a tool to strengthen accountability and improve transparency.

The dashboard will make information on department's progress towards implementing audit recommendations easily available to the mayor, city council, city management, and the public.

After we roll out the dashboard, I will come back to the council and give you a brief uh presentation on what information is being reported and how the dashboard works.

With the implementation of the revised procedures and public dashboards, I anticipate anticipate uh the implant implementation rates will improve.

Communicating the results of our work is part of our mission and promotes transparency about what we do as well as the work of city government.

We do this by publishing our audit reports on our website, publicly presenting our audits and other reports, talking to residents at the city's community engagement university, asking the public for their audit suggestions, 11 years in counting, and using X to inform the public about our audits, upcoming presentations, where they can find our audit reports, and how to even give us audit suggestions.

The professional audit staff are highly qualified, holding master's degrees in fields such as business, health, or public administration, accounting, and economics.

During fiscal year 2024, one audit staff member became a certified internal auditor, and another became a certified information systems auditor.

Overall, four staff have one or more of the professional certification shown on this slide.

As an office, we have 93 years of audit experience, almost all of it auditing Kansas City government.

Two staff members have two thirds of this experience.

Between April 2020 and December 2023, five audit staff with about 133 years of audit experience retired.

We currently have a vacant audit manager position and are actively recruiting to fill that position.

Government auditing standards require auditors to complete at least 80 hours of continuing education every two years.

All staff met this requirement.

We are active and contribute to our professional through a number of professional associations.

I and some of the staff serve in leadership roles in some of these.

In addition to the leadership roles, we also participate as presenters, facilitators, moderators at workshops, seminars, and conferences.

I want to recognize and thank the office staff for the work that they do.