City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. My questions were answered during the work system. Thank you. Thank you.

Councilor Webber, so moved for the motion.

Councillor Weber, a practical question. Each of these material weaknesses that are listed include a plan of action. Who was it that actually, was there a team of people or who drafted those plan of actions?

Okay. I'm still a little unclear. So the current one we're looking at for the 2020 audit, who drafted the plan of action?

Sure, a couple of questions. Amanda, if you were trying to explain this 99-page audit document to the general public, how would you describe this audit?

Thank you. If the public were comparing this result to other Oregon cities, do you think that this is like an average audit? Is it below average? Is it above? Average, what would you characterize this as?

Yeah, and so most Oregon cities, are they able to complete audits generally on time?

Stay tuned. I have a couple more questions, but I want to stop at the bottom of my counselor desk.

I guess one more question for you. I guess first I want to thank the staff and Marina and Unplugged for this audit. I accept that this audit is an accurate representation of our financials. The thing that I'm stumbling over is the plan of action. I want to make sure that if we ask our council president to sign something, that it's a thoughtful plan that will resonate with the public. My quick reaction is that the tone feels optimistic. And I wanted to make sure that we don't paint a rosy picture of our control recovery. Does that resonate with you at all?

I guess I would suggest to the team that we be collaborative and if we ask our council president to communicate a plan for the state that it would be conservative as opposed to optimistic, but I'll ask another question. So like on the finding of 2022-001, it talks about journal entries. If I go to the unfiled recommendations, the recommendations are more lengthy. They talk about written documentation, qualified accounting personnel, regular bank accounting, reconciliation, supervisor. I feel like In general, our communication of the plan only discusses one small aspect of the audit findings, a

I guess one of my last comments would be, I feel like we're being asked to sign something, or the council president is being asked to sign something based on your amazing understanding, which I appreciate, but we don't share that understanding. Would it be possible to get an update on our control environment, our current control environment, so that we could also have the same understanding you do about the risks?

Thank you. I guess my suggestion to the team would be to approve the resolution, but ask that the letter be amended to reflect the more conservative and thorough description of our contours.

Councilor Weber, just one other question or you can reflect back to us. But in March of 2023, the previous council shared concerns about the last audit, which was a failed audit. And it began a three and a half year process to finally getting one more audit. So there's been a lot of frustration. There's been a lot of feelings that promises were made. I guess, so that creates a question with council always, Marina, you were around in that process. You sat in the room when we were told we would get three audits by June and we finally got the first one 8 months later. So are you comfortable now?

So, Council President, I'm happy to make that resolution. Just to be clear, I would still request an amendment that the letter be redrafted to a different tone. And I just, before I do that, I want to check with the council team to see if there's consensus for that amendment or what the council chair would advise.

Councilors, do you have a... You're comfortable, though, approving the resolution with that?

I would recommend that we adjust the tone of the letter so that our council president is signing something that I feel is a little bit more accurate, but still approve the resolution with that agreement.

The example I used was that the plan did not address all the recommendations in the audit. And I felt that that was missing. And I would like some more clarity over which controls are still in progress and when they've been fixed.

I think that's an accurate statement. Ross, does that give you? Yeah, that's much better. Yes, I agree. Thank you for the clarification. So, Council President, if I have consensus, would you be okay with me?

My suggestion would be that based on this direction, Amanda, and you prepare it, and you submit it without our further review. OK. If you're OK with that, that would be my recommendation.

So I'm going to make a motion to amend the resolution 2367.

As amended. I'll make a motion to vote on the motion 267 as amended. Good.

Council President, I'm sorry, before we move on, I just wanted, in our work session, we suggested that we were going to authorize building demo. And I just want to make sure that, was that going to be under new business? I just wanted to make sure. Authorize. Did we discuss in the work session that we, in the council meeting, we wanted to, we had two action items. One was to authorize your search, and the second was, I thought, I heard, to authorize building demo of the Honeywell property.

Just commendations. My granddaughters love to go to the library. They love the way the staff interact every week. There's a constant turnover of new projects. And I'm very glad they didn't win the new bikes because we have enough bikes. But it's wonderful little projects you have to encourage summer reading. So thank you.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- It was just very positive to read that the garlic festival flowed so smoothly. No big issues. And I'm sure it helps just to have the friendly presence wandering around the world. So, HAB-Terry Palmos- I would say, yeah, I'll take a little credit but

Just a formal commendation. You've been working with Isaiah and just really doing a wonderful job on the bathrooms that look very nice, which is kind of a symbolic thing when people go in there with their kids. So thank you and pass that on to Isaiah.

Yes, I was. I know we have a very full agenda, but I wanted to build off a public comment from Emily about a data center more for you. And I think the reason why I would suggest bringing that forward is because With the connection we're going to have with the planning commission, it would be good to see if we could get alignment about the direction we should provide them. And so I wanted to offer that up for consideration to the council, if that would be something we would like to add to the agenda. I don't come with any sort of preconceived notions of what it looks like, that ordinance commun

A quick thing. Hopefully I'm on the MAC committee, which is the Metropolitan Area Communication Council. We need to renew a contract with Comcast. It's a pretty complicated discussion, but I just want to make sure I'm authorized by it. It sounds like the other small towns and everybody's going to go along with this renewal of Comcast. So I'm just double checking. My plan is to kind of vote with the majority, which sounds like will be the renewal. So that's informational unless anybody has a big reason for me not to do that. I just wanted to check in since it's going to be a formal vote.

Don't read too much into what my expression was. Yeah.

MAC has gone through quite a bit of transition. Their previous director is gone. There was some things that went on there, but then they've also got an interim person and we're moving ahead now with some of this stuff. So I'll keep you posted. A request for me would be, I don't know how feasible it is, but the Urban Renewal Agency did not leave this month. I don't know if it's possible next week before you would leave, Ross, if we could have a meeting with Tiberius. I think Tiberius hopefully would be positioned to bring some concrete proposals to us where they could take over and run the urba

It's a, we have a standard franchise agreement with Comcast that's existed for quite a while. And every year they renegotiate it, the powers that be that work for MAC, the SAP, then they bring it to the board and ask us to approve it.

And you can either do them or not do them, what you want to do. Well, there's excellent staff who've negotiated that app. So there's not really much for me except to vote in favor once the staff recommends that I could vote against it, but it will pass because when it reaches that point, it's been vetted.