Budget and Audit Committee Meeting - February 6, 2018
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Budget and Audit Committee Meeting - February 6, 2018
The Budget and Audit Committee of the Sacramento City Council met on Tuesday, February 6, 2018, at 2:02 p.m. in the City Hall Council Chamber. Chair Mayor Steinberg was absent; Vice Chair Angelique Ashby presided along with members Rick Jennings and Jay Schenirer. The meeting lasted approximately 24 minutes and included public comments, a consent calendar of four items, and one discussion item regarding the City Auditor's proposed audit plan for FY 2018/19.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Frank Slonck spoke about dirty streets and potholes in his district north of the freeway, inadequate street sweeping, and questioned the city’s use of $6 million in public funds to renovate a hotel near the Golden 1 Center. He argued that public money should be used for city services, not private projects. Committee members responded that some of his facts were incorrect, noted the hotel subsidy was a grant and not a loan, and offered to forward his street concerns to his council member, Councilmember Warren.
Consent Calendar
All items were approved unanimously by motion (Jennings/Schenirer) with a vote of 3-0.
- Update on the Results of the Community Budget Forums and Priorities for FY 2018/19 Proposed Budget – Accepted and forwarded to City Council.
- FY 2016/17 Measure U Sales Tax Performance Audit – Accepted and forwarded to City Council.
- FY 2016/17 Independent Accountants’ Report on the Appropriation Limit Calculation – Accepted and forwarded to City Council.
- FY 2016/17 Sacramento City Employees’ Retirement System Annual Financial Report – Accepted.
Discussion Items
- City Auditor’s Proposed Audit Plan for FY 2018/19 (File ID: 2018-00137): City Auditor Jorge Oseguera presented the tentative audit plan. He noted that the Community Development Department building division audit from the previous plan would be deferred due to departmental changes, and replaced by an audit of city-owned leased property. He also highlighted new audits including on-street parking, vehicle fleet (utilities), emergency preparedness, animal care, code enforcement, and others. Members discussed priorities: Vice Chair Ashby and Member Schenirer strongly advocated elevating a recycling/solid waste audit to priority one, given growing recycling volumes and constituent complaints. Oseguera disclosed a potential conflict of interest because his brother works for a major hauler, but members felt the conflict could be scoped out. The committee also prioritized city-owned leased property, on-street parking, animal care, and emergency preparedness, and suggested moving the utilities vehicle fleet audit down. Members recommended scheduling a cannabis audit (including equity) for future years. The committee passed a motion (Ashby/Schenirer) to accept the audit plan and forward it to the City Council with the aforementioned priority adjustments.
Key Outcomes
- Consent Calendar adopted unanimously (3-0).
- The City Auditor’s Proposed Audit Plan for FY 2018/19 was accepted and forwarded to the City Council for final approval, with the following directions:
- Replace the deferred CDD building division audit with a city-owned leased property audit (priority one).
- Elevate a recycling/solid waste audit to priority one, scoped to avoid conflict of interest.
- Prioritize on-street parking, animal care, and emergency preparedness audits.
- Defer utilities vehicle fleet audit priority.
- Consider a cannabis/equity audit for FY 2019/20.
- The meeting adjourned at 2:26 p.m.
Meeting Transcript
Okay, we're gonna call the City of Sacramento budget and audit committee meeting to order. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? You council member Jennings? Here. Councilmember Shneer. Councilmember Ashby? Here. And for the record, Mayor Steinberg will be absent today. Okay, the first item we have on the agenda is public comments. Do you have anybody signed up to speak? Or an item on the agenda. I do have one speaker for items not on the agenda. That's Frank Slanek. Come on up, Mr. Slanick. Yep. We'll give you a couple minutes here. Uh I have complained about the condition of our streets. They are dirty, full of trash and garbage, and pool of podholes. We don't have enough maintenance to clean it up. And uh downtown is not so bad, but our district north of the freeway is bad. And uh those trucks which are supposed to sweep it, they are not coming often enough. And I have uh another complaint. I wonder you just gave six million dollars for the private party to renovate the hotel next to the arena. Uh do you have authority to give public money to private enterprise? I don't know how that money is supposed to be spent like that. Uh the money you collect from people are you supposed to use for uh you know the services to keep the city up, not to give it to somebody because he just doesn't have enough funds to fund his project. He's supposed to take the if it's viable, the bank would give him loan. If not, he's supposed to sell it to somebody who has the money. You cannot just give public money and then you raise a fees. You know, we pay a lot of money now. If you compare it with uh, you know, let's say 10 to 15 years ago, you know, our utility bills are much higher. You have to, you know, have some discipline how you spend it. That's it. Okay. Mr. Sonic, first of all, thank you for your comments. Uh second of all, on on the second half of your comments, you have several of those facts um not quite right, but what I am gonna do today is you have uh it looks like you're a constituent of district two, and so on the road condition issue. What I'm gonna do is ask the clerk to forward your information to your council member, which is council member Warren. He doesn't sit on the budget and audit committee, so he wouldn't ever be here at this time for this hearing, but we will get this to his staff and perhaps they'll reach back out to you and and ask you specifically which streets you're looking at. I will s I will send him email too. Okay, yeah, that's a great idea. And we will make sure he knows you were here as well today. And is is there I just uh is it possible to access some where some rules or some you know charter, city charter, how the money can be spent. So I would just tell you, I mean, you need to, I would I would encourage you to do a little bit more research on how those decisions were made and exactly what the public's uh expenditure was. We did have a very robust presentation at a recent budget and audit meeting also at the city council. Um it's not true that that some of those subsidies that you're talking about are are not related and utilities has nothing to do with the funding that went downtown. So I think you would actually be pleasantly surprised if you got a little bit more information, and perhaps someone from the auditor's office would give you uh their synopsis of our recent overview of how we handled the funding for the green and what it meant. That uh he they obtain the grant. It was not loaned.
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