At the January 7th, 2008 City Council meeting… Stan Beckham plans to present an agenda item for an independent 3rd party audit of the city books. It’s unknown whether there has ever been a 3rd party audit of the city books.
This could likely be the most important meeting of the year. It’s time the hardworking, tax-paying citizens of Tehachapi know where their money is going.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Add to the Agenda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
What ever happened with this audit? Did it happen, if not, why? And if it did, what were the findings?
I also heard about $15,000 that was set aside for a basket weaving course that was to be held in Tehachapi. The course never happened but apparently the money was never accounted for. Is this true or is it gossip?
No Carrie, the ‘investigative’ audit that I asked for was voted down by the council as being too expensive ($8,000) and unnecessary because the City already has so many other audits. Of course these other audits are just “we’ll audit what you hand us type audits” and do not delve deeply into the cash flow.
However, Greg Garrett told us last week that the city staff had found money to the tune of $29K and change during an internal audit.
What made me question and want to do the audit and what I couldn’t talk about the night of the meeting, which I can talk about now is, 4 days before Jason Caudle quit we received a fax from a company back east claiming that $500,000 of their money was missing or misapplied. Then the city council never made an offer to increase Jason’s salary to keep him on board. Jason was making roughly $100K per year. The new City Manager will be paid $150K per year. Don’t you think Jason would have stayed if the city council had made him this offer? Kinda makes you go, Hmmmm, doesn’t it?
As for the basket weaving course, that was $5,000 and was given to Phil Wyman. This was a grant from the city with no payback if not used, to my knowledge. I am sure Mr. Wyman is keeping this money in reserve for future use for our local tribe. From what I have seen the city has a practice of giving out money with no oversight or contingencies.
