Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

City's audit clean, with exceptions

For the most part the City of Prescott's annual audit was clean. However, there were some problems with the Municipal Court records.

This information was presented to the Prescott City Council at its October meeting by Randy Turner, of the Certified Public Accounting firm of Taylor, Rodgers and Turner, PLLC.

Turner said the city has $400,000 less in cash than it had in 2002, but this is because a bond was paid off in 2003 and the city quit collecting funds for it. Additionally, the city made several improvements during the year which depleted cash reserves.

On the other hand, he said, revenue was up $50,000, but other expenditures rose by $260,000. Part of the reason for the expenses, he added, is because things are more expensive than they were.

But, Turner said, the city was otherwise close on the majority of budget items.

For the electric, water and sewer departments, he said, a bond was paid off and the sales tax money funding it ended. Because of this less money came in for the year. More money was taken out of the electric department and transferred to the city side to pay expenses.

"The electric, water and sewer departments run like a business," he said. "You have a product to sell to customers, but you don't need to keep spending more than you take in. You need to be careful and watch the rates, raising them when its needed. There will be a lot of changes due to rising costs."

For the Municipal Court, he said, there have been issues for years and these may never get cleared up. For the city's portion and small claims there are problems because things haven't been done the way they should be, but steps have been taken to correct these problems.

For the city division, he said, the bonds and fines pending couldn't be reconciled, some deposits weren't made on a timely basis and a deposit error was never corrected. There are several old outstanding checks needing to be investigated and the bank account wasn't properly reconciled.

For the small claims court, amounts have been collected but not disbursed and the carryover hasn't been identified. There are several old outstanding checks needing to be investigated. Total receipts of $145,41 were unaccounted for, and the wrong amount was collected on two cases. Additionally, deposits weren't always made on a timely basis, the cash receipts and cash disbursements journals weren't properly maintained and the bank account wasn't properly reconciled.

These problems, he said, are considered "material weaknesses". However, he added, these problems are not related to any criminal activity, but to human error.

The court workers, Turner said, do a good job with the day-to-day activities of the job, but they aren't bookkeepers and this area sometimes gets neglected.

Turner suggested the Municipal Court refuse to take cash, taking either personal or cashier's checks instead. This would eliminate several accounting and banking problems.

Basically, he said, the city's 2003 audit was clean and there are no problems.

The Council voted to accept the audit as reported.