Rusty Windle of Windle & Associates was in attendance of Parks’ March 3 to answer commissioner questions on the 2019 financials. Windle gave commissioners drafts of third and fourth quarter financials.
The question was raised on why commissioners could not give those financials to City Hall and Windle explained that there were “timing issues” with income figures arriving late and being shown in the wrong place. This included $30,000 described by citizen activists as “missing” that was held back when the Lake Leatherwood City Park tax was on the ballot, and $30,000 that carried over from 2018 that was not shown in revenue and was shown as a loss in Parks’ financials.
Commissioner Dave Hartmann asked what the next steps were to arrive at completed numbers and Windle answered that the commission needed to look at the quarterly reports he supplied to see if they like the format. He would then go back and tweak the numbers to show truer values with the changes they wanted to see.
Windle explained that financials would be easier to break down into specifics, examples being by cost center or even park-to-park spending, and it was just a matter of applying the right verbiage to expenses so it was more searchable in system.
Director Justin Huss informed commissioners that the city would split the taxes to Parks’ accounts to make it easier to track. Commissioner Scott Bardin thanked Huss for holding down spending and reported that cabin rentals were up.
Losing sight of topic
After Windle left, commissioners discussed how Parks had landed in the financial quagmire they have been having. Chair Ruth Hager offered the reason that somewhere between having a dedicated accountant and using freeware to work with Parks’ financials that order was lost.
Commissioners continued to discuss why there was suspicion around Parks’ financial operations and Hartmann offered that when questions were asked on operations they didn’t have any answers. Huss responded that they didn’t have answers because the commission did nothing with financials after they took them over (referring to outsourcing). Huss said that the information is there and that it needed to be sorted.
Reasons for either issue were not agreed upon, and order was lost when a member of the public attending the meeting interrupted the workshop asking Huss why he was packing up after Hager allowed for Pat Costner to speak. Point of Order was called consecutive times by Vice Chair Cameron Denoewer. Eventually the workshop settled down.
The meeting ended with Costner saying she felt that the complexity of the books had become too much around 2016 and 2017 and that she didn’t think the quarterly reports will show what commissioners hope it will. She also asked why the public should go to the director for answers when input did not seem welcome. It was agreed the workshop had gotten off track.