 Thank You mayor van der steen members of the common council administrator wolf and guests in 2019 the city of sheboygan contracted clifton larson allen to perform an operational assessment of the finance department and Earlier this year they presented their findings this evening the deputy finance director teridui and myself are here to provide you an update on the progress made on those items Some of the focus areas of improvement which assisted us in creating our priorities And were included policies and procedures Which these were fairly non-existent or those that we did have were quite outdated when we began Internal controls these relate primarily to our setups and structure and tend to be key risk areas As well as staffing and tools the resources which are key in accomplishing all of these improvements The tools tend to be software related Now what I will do is I'll hand it off to our deputy director teridui as she speaks in more detail about some of these items I'm going to start off by going over some of the items that we have completed so far First off, we've been working on those procedures that Marty just mentioned that were identified in the CLA assessment to date we have created 70 written procedures and Those are needed so that staff can be cross-trained And we've been able to create some efficiencies as those procedures have been reviewed and a new set of eyes get to look at them that can lead to questions investigation and then we've been able to Make some of our processes more streamlined as The check run process being revised and is an example of that Next we've looked at all of the position purposes and the finance department We've updated those while creating the account in three position purpose. So we've shifted some of the responsibilities between The position purposes. So that's why these tenured staff will be using the written procedures now because they're gonna have to learn Processes that they hadn't been doing In their previous own time here with the city Also, it was identified that a journal entry approval process needed to be created And that was mainly for a separation to keep a segregation of duties So right now I am approving the accountants journal entries and the director is approving my journal entries We've also worked on Expanding our P card program and we've closed some of the store charge accounts Because the process of reconciling and tracking those expenditures was very inefficient So we've created an Excel spreadsheet That is able to improve the departmental and summary tracking So we have other staff that are working on improving that process still to make it work even better Then we have hired the accountant three position Because the finance department it needs more horsepower as Tad Mentions to address the items in the CLA assessment our audit findings and also to prepare for strapped staff transitions as we have Some very tenured staff that will be looking at retirement over the next coming years We've also been providing Munis training to the library and municipal court staff so that they're able to perform Daily receding which helps maintain that segregation of duties and Then lastly we've been working on the budget book spreadsheet So there's a word in Excel component that we've merged for each of the orgs and all the files have been Uniformly formatted and that allows for us to be able to make mass changes to the files Such as this year we had added some accounts and we're able to do that addition in one Well swoop instead of having to go into each of those documents to do that Then I'm going to move on to our items that are in progress So we're currently reviewing the procurement investments and capital asset and depreciation Policies and we're viewing those and updating them Earlier this year Marty and I had attended a sieve mick training on Writing policies and procedures where we were given a recommended Policy template from sieve mick and we intend to implement and use that template Also a very important process that we're working on right now is a cash and bank reconciliation The development of a full reconciliation process is critical so that we can start to have a month Then close which has not been happening in the past We've been able to make some small changes that have made a big impact on Streamlining that process and I've been working with our consultant to fully establish the process and document the procedure Next we've been doing vendor Cleanup our system has many vendors that are duplicated for various reasons The IT department was able to extract the vendor list into Excel And then one of our accountants determined the vendors that need to be updated vendors that can be merged and Verify 1099 filing requirements. We were also able to delete several hundred vendors that had no activity Next is the purchase order process We have created a centralized city purchasing email So that we're not using an individual's email because when there's staff turnover then you're you're left with the problem of having to Get those emails forwarded And we'll also be working on merging vendors and then creating unique PO addresses Which will improve our process and allow for more PO's to be sent automatically and electronically Next is the sidewalk assessment process and conversion from AS 400. We're working collaboratively with the DPW and We just recently met with them to identify a timeline of when assessment details are needed from DPW for the finance department To bill out the assessment Allow time for payments and payment plans to be set up before that's being put on to the tax roll and And lastly the electronic file organization as COVID hit and people were working from home It was called attention to the fact that we really need to be able to Find files efficiently and clean up our naming conventions of folders and files. So we're actively working on Working on cleaning that up I'll hand it back to Marty Thank you, Tara. Definitely some progress being made there But I'm sure your next question is what's next Certainly we had some already pre-identified focus areas to take as our next steps As Tara had mentioned one of those key steps is to test and review those procedures that were created When you create 70 brand new procedures you're bound to find some tweaks and modifications that are necessary and our newly hired account in three is going to be Performing some shadowing of the co-workers within the department and as they perform the tasks She can review the written procedure and identify areas that either are missed omitted Incorrect or even possibly recommend some some modifications for more efficiencies We'll also be putting some greater emphasis to our AS 400 to munis conversion That's definitely something that I know many of you have already heard about Some of the steps that have been taken as we've identified what we call our munis super users Those super users will be forming teams and certainly in finance. We have several super users identified Those super users will dig into the munis modules that are necessary For in continuing the improvements. We've identified certain key areas that the munis modules need to be Converted from the AS 400 and into munis those would include loans special assessments capital assets Personal property and then there are also others out there Certainly those align well with some of the other items that we've talked about with our policies and Procedures so these these tend to be linked together which then Continues a unified approach of completing a full task As we work through many of these new module setups We'll also be looking at correct mapping of accounts in the background And while we do that we can review and look for opportunities to modify our fund structure and chart of accounts Those various improvements include merging of funds Currently we've identified several areas of fund cleanup where we have for example tax incremental districts We have debt service and capital funds and we're looking to merge that into one tax incremental district fund that will Minimize the cost Transferring and or adjustments made between funds. It also keeps a cleaner Full picture of each tax incremental district This was something that we did have a phone conversation with our auditors to kind of vet the pros and cons of that they actually Have you can do it either way, but they they certainly see it more often with it being a single fund rather than split between the two Also while we're reviewing some of those objects Within the funds each of the funds or accounts as we like to call them We're going to be reviewing for any redundancy so that we can clean up and remove some Maybe not as useful accounts, but also be able to identify areas where we're missing some some key and Intuitive type accounts that will help department heads as they code their expenses We also will be looking at some of the account structure setups such as how we utilize our due-to-do from accounts Sometimes the software we found Has a better purpose for certain types of accounts the way that they were structured than how we've been using them So it'll create a more effective and efficient Workflow as well as month-end and year-end close We're also going to be working collaboratively with our IT department regarding munis user role setups This really gets at the internal controls and enhances and improves our Approval process both on transactional basis, but also when creating new funds new accounts and transactions or even new vendors on our next slide It's key to have all of these initiatives But in order to show progress and keep tabs on all of these you certainly have to have a good tracking mechanism in place Following the CLA assessment There was a summary document that was built with key areas of Assignments of who the staff member is to lead the project Who's all involved? What are the? Other departments involved what are the key deadlines both from a start or a starting point and a deadline To complete the project this this document is being currently merged with a previously Defined and built action plan for the department as well as staff task workloads the staff task the Staff task workloads also will then be able to have Identified procedures linked to it so that we can follow through where the previous procedures were were built As Sarah had mentioned a lot of the procedures that were created Definitely have to be in a workable system and so we also will be building a table of contents and a Structure so that we can find these Whether you're the primary staff member or a cross-train staff member so some organization of these procedures will be key and then we'll also be looking to Provide quarterly updates at our finance and personnel committee And then also be able to come back to the Common Council with any updates and questions So with that I guess I turn it back over to the mayor if there are any questions this evening for us