 All right. Okay. I'll call the order of the committee of the home. Would you please call the roll? Alderperson Ackley? Here. Alderperson Bourne? Here. Alderperson Decker? Here. Alderperson Felde? Here. Alderperson Felicke-Poneski? Here. Alderperson Laster? She'll be late. Alderperson Mitchell? Yes. And he's excused. Alderperson Pirella? Here. Alderperson Salazar? Here. Alderperson Savaglio? Present. There are eight present. Okay. We'll start out with the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance is to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic which always stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Alrighty. Is there anyone here for public forum? There is not this evening. Okay. Alrighty. We'll go right on to 2.1. RC number 21-21-22 by Finance and Personnel Committee, to whom was referred, direct referral RO number 10-21-22 by Director of Human Resources and Labor Relations, submitting the Internal Controls Assessment, City of Sheboygan, Benefits Administration Assessment, dated April 19th, 2021, which is repaired by Clifton, Larson, Allen, LLP, CLA recommends the document be referred to the Committee of the Whole. Vicki? Okay. We'll start out with you, I guess. All right. Awesome. Scott, can you pull up the PowerPoint for me? Thank you. So I wanted to share with you a little bit of the background of how we got to this place today. Clifton, Larson, Allen provided an operational and organizational assessment for the City of Sheboygan, Finance and the Human Resources Department, and that was completed and presented to the Council in May of 2020. One of the telling pieces that they discovered was that the Human Resources team needed sound, present, and ongoing leadership. So unfortunately, that was not something that had been present for a number of years. So I want to walk you just through a little bit of the timeline, and this is what was shared with the Finance and Personnel Committee, so you can understand the changes that have happened over the course of the last year and a half. In, as I just said, January of 2020, we had the assessment done by the, by CLA, and Tara Dewey was hired as the Deputy Director of Finance. In February, the Director of HR and Labor Relations resigned at the end of February, and given that the Senior Center was closing before going down because of COVID, I had spoken with Daryl Houghlin to say that I could assist in any way that I, that he thought was helpful, and he asked if I would then join as the Interim Director of HR, which I, I did gladly do. Then Governor Evers the next day, actually, after I took that position as the Interim, declared a state of emergency because of COVID. In April, the following month, Daryl Houghlin announced his retirement. In May, then, the Council graciously appointed me, approved me as the Permanent Director of HR and Labor Relations for that, for the department. July 3rd was Daryl Houghlin's last day as City Administrator. That is when we, we got into a lot of the different changes that were happening within both Finance and HR, that Todd Wolf became the City Administrator when his first day was July 7th. Within the week, we had a strategic planning with the City Administrator and the HR department. We had the retirement in July of the AP and Purchasing Assistant in the department. We had an Accountant Payroll Assistant was moved into the Finance Department. The Auditor Analyst position in Finance became an Accountant too. We hired a clerk too in the HR department, and then we also released the clerk one at that time. So there was a lot of personnel changes in the month of July. We also started a payroll assessment by Baycore, which works closely with Munis, which is our ERP system. We were looking at improving our processes for how personnel changes were processed and also to use Munis more fully. In August of 2020, the HR Generalist was released at the beginning of that month. We hired Jessica Haas as the Accountant 3. In October, Denise Clark joined as an HR Generalist, and Chris Trecker, the Finance Admin Services Clerk, was hired. In November of 2020, Michael Herman, an Accountant 1, was hired. The Finance Director resigned in the middle of the month, and Daniela Tainer Partipillo was hired as our Interim Finance Director. Unfortunately then, in December of 2020, there were some anomalies that were discovered, and our Benefits Administrator was suspended with pay the middle of December, and after our internal investigation, that Administrator Wolff and I and others were involved with that the Administrator was then released at the end of the year. So in January of 2021, a lot of the changes that continue to happen and as a result of the changes of last year. Sandy Halverson was to be, again, I want to say that she should be commended for her leadership and sharing of her institutional knowledge. We would not have gotten through all the changes last year and the beginning of this year without her support. On Accountant 2, retired from the Finance Department. We chose, we did vet a number of agencies to look at the Benefits Administration to do an audit, and CLA was chosen in March, and they came in and obviously the report that is in front of you. April of 2021, our Admin Services Clerk 1 was released. Christina Leptow, who was in the HR department, was promoted into the Finance Department as an Accountant 2. Tara Dewey as the Deputy Director then announced her resignation, which was effective May 21st. We did have anticipated start dates for the Finance Director, Caitlin Krieger is on board, and then HR Admin Assistant. Unfortunately, one of the HR generalists did not come. So looking at the audit that is, again, in front of you, on page four of that audit lists the items that we, we as a city, identified as items that needed to be investigated. And so those are listed here on this slide as well as on that page. So I want to be clear that CLA was not looking for something, nor did they come outside of the purview of Administrator Wolff and myself asking them to come in because there were so many concerns that we felt that we needed a set of, another set of eyes looking at our processes. So to just go through the list with you, we had anomalies with the short-term and long-term disability. There was the application or inconsistent application of spousal surcharge waivers. The application of HSA payments to retirees was discovered. The inappropriate application of HSA payments, I should say. There were manual overrides of specific prescriptions. Again, the incorrect or inappropriate administration of short-term disability benefits. There was the potential of chamber cash being purchased and used inappropriately. The distribution and receipt of gift cards and other personal benefits as city employees are not to receive gifts of any kind. The police and fire sick bank management and monitoring is an ongoing concern as well. And then obviously the inconsistent application and policies and practices within the Human Resources Department as well as benefits administration. So I wanted you also to know that Administrator Wolff and myself are on the same page regarding the transparency and expectations of what the Human Resources Department should provide for not only the employees but the city and the residents of Sheboygan. We wanted to make sure that you were cognizant of this report. We have started doing immediate and actually before this report came out that the Comptroller responsibilities have moved over to Administrator Wolff. Our banking controls are being clarified and policies are being implemented to make sure that those separations are complete. We are working diligently with a group of folks, Kerry Arons, the payroll department, members of HR to separate the payroll function and access from Human Resources because we had overlapping responsibilities and as a result of that, Sandy Halverson who had reported to me, now reports to Administrator Wolff. They just went through the payroll project with Baker. So that should be completed by August or September of this year. Again, we're working with our insurance brokers, which is USI, to mitigate any future overrides to make sure that this cannot happen again. Our employee handbook is going through an entire rewrite to make sure that we are compliant and have clear expectations. A code of conduct will be embedded in the new handbook with an annual sign-off for all employees. A whistleblower program is being established. We're working with Civic, our insurance carrier, our liability insurance carrier to make sure that we are doing that appropriately. We have had 100% turnover in the Human Resources Department since January of 2020 and we continue to put the checks and balances in place to make sure that we can appropriately work with both the Human Resources and Finance Departments to assure you that we are doing things appropriately and above board. And then the implementation and utilization of Munis. So one of the things that happened was that going outside our software system allowed for some of these things to happen. And with the expectation that using Munis will create a trail, an audit trail, that that can't happen again. So I leave you with this last slide. That this was our mission that we created as part of our strategic planning, that the Human Resources team of trusted professionals serves as strategic and operational partners providing an inclusive, high-quality work experience for all employees. We are not here yet, but this is our stretch. This is our goal and this is our expectations for where we will be in the months and years to come. Thank you, Vicki, for that great review. I would like to just talk to the council a little bit and explain a few things. So when I first came into the city administrator's position and even when I was interviewed for this position, one of the many things that I explained to the committee was the fact that I bring the business side, the other side of the fence, right? Not the municipal side. We are in what I call a company and I refer the city as almost like a global company within our community because we have so many different facilities, we have so many different cultures, we have so many different processes and practices within our community. What I want you guys to please, and yes, I said you guys, make that one. I said you guys. What I would like the council to remember is that we have a great community and team members. These problems in processes and practices are not events that happened within the last six months, the last 12 months, the last 18 months. These are processes and practices that have been broken for decades. This is a management problem. This is a problem where our city has not been managing at the level that it should have been. We can take it all the way back to, you know, for many, many, many years. What I want the council to understand moving forward is that with new management comes change, right? Change is coming as one of my mattress. We are continuously bringing that change and bringing the city to the level of what it needs to be, to be an employer of choice and have operations of excellence within our city and our community. We have to have good stewardship because we need to take care of not just our budgets from year to year, but our annual spending that we take care of for our constituents. We need to improve our processes so that we're spending our money. And as I've said with Mayor Sorenson, we need to be profitable so that we can take those profits and expand our services and expand the policies that we have in place. We have great people and we have to remember that great people can only do what rules and regulations and policies are in place. What you saw today for many of us are very, very scary, very, you know, concerning. What we have to understand is because there were no policies and practices that were being managed and maintained by management, bad things happen even with good people. We've addressed them continuing to expand on everything in every department throughout the city, but we also are bringing in other third parties because it's not just something when you see something say something, it's, okay, why did it happen? When did it happen? What do we need to do to address it? So we have great people and I support them. And as you can see through the timeline, there has been a lot of change. So as an employee once said, there's been more change in 10 months than 10 years. Please understand that that change is going to continue. Have faith in the direction we're going and believe it or not, we are going to be transparent and we will bring these infractions. If any additional occur that we find, we will bring them forward as we improve the process. If you have any questions, please let Vicki and myself know. Thank you. Yes, Barb. Okay. Is it okay to ask now or would you like us to forward them to you? No, I believe Comediate A Whole is to allow for open discussion, open communication during this time period. So correct me if I'm wrong, Chair Decker, but at this time it is appropriate to open up. Yes. Can I go then? Go ahead. Thank you. All right. My first question is, I know this is a process and you're still working through it, but to date, have you found that the employee that was granting all of this stuff, it was purposeful or because of lack of training? I think what I would, in my opinion, going back to bad management, we didn't have a true HR department for many, many years and I think every department head would agree with that to some degree. The situation is that when you don't have policies and procedures that are defined and you have no oversight, no separation of duties as you've all heard me say, we have good people. What happens is people tend to take on responsibilities and accountabilities not realizing that they don't have that permission. When you also have a title of benefits administrator, the title alone tells vendors that they're the administrator of the benefits, right? That's a pretty high statement of just a title. Right. So if you have no definition of the title, you have no management to communicate to the vendor what ability, what access, what approval rating the employee has and the management doesn't control it or manage it or audit it. We didn't have auditing either. Bad things can happen. So all of those items that I just touched on have all been adjusted. The vendors know exactly what the protocol is. The policies are being updated and reviewed and the separation of duties is in place, actually. Did that answer your question? No. Okay. Was it intentional or just from lack of training that they, like you said, that they just thought that they had that power and could do it? It's difficult to say what the intent was behind the actions. I think that as Administrator Wolfe just said that there were opportunities that could be used that in a normal circumstance that someone would not have necessarily had the opportunity to do that. So there was an opportunity, but I don't know if it was through, it could be any number of reasons, whether it was neglect or inconsistency. No training. There was actually, that's true, a lack of training and a lack of oversight. So I don't, I can't answer that. I don't know what the intent was, Barb. Okay. Thank you. All right. Marcus. Thank you. Can we pull up the slide where it was the list of things that were concerning? Please. Yes. I'm guessing that since we're talking about this, that you're already handling all of these things, but for how long these things were going on, do we have a number of how much this is cost that taxpayers estimated? The cost, we have not tallied the costs. The costs are more actually towards the employee in some circumstances that employees were more harmed by this than the outright taxpayer based on how these things were done. If that's the case, are we going to dig into that further and make sure that we're not intentionally harming our employees moving forward and making restitution? We've discussed that. We discussed that with the leadership team on the prior council, and it is my recommendation that we are not going to do that. We are going to basically, as some would say, turn a new leaf, start a new day, and move forward. Please understand that we have good employees, and not all employees are necessarily at fault. We can sit and say yes they are because they should have known better. Some of these issues are what one could say is reductions in costs that they should have been paying. For us to go after the rest of the team for a decision that was made by one team member that's no longer with us, I don't feel that that's fair, plus we really don't need to cause a lot of strife within the city because where do you draw the line? Yes, you may. Thank you. So I think also because of the way that some of these challenges or anomalies happened that a lot of the employees did not know that they assumed that everything was taken care of in the way that it was supposed to be taken care of, and I don't think that there was any broad-based understanding that this is something that was going on within the department. I really don't believe that outside employees understood the ramifications. Can I get one more question, please? Sure. Thank you. The chamber cash purchases and cash benefits and the distribution of gift cards or other personal benefits, how was that even, how did that happen? Was that caused by city others? It would happen because of a lack of policy and procedure, so definitely a lack of process. And as you know from both the prior CLA assessment and this current one, that the changes that had to happen in personnel so that it was very easy to trust a request, it was very easy to trust that this is somebody who's always making a request for various things, it was just very easy to continue that practice without questioning it. And that's part of the, not that we don't want to not trust our employees, but there was no trail to say that that's not how this should happen normally. So was there theft involved here of chamber cash or gift cards? Again, it's really difficult to say that it's deliberate in that way, that there is the opportunity and the opportunity for a lack of documentation that demonstrates where certain things went. For example, for the chamber cash, the city has a policy or had a policy, we stopped that, that you would receive chamber cash as an employee if you went to a local outside of the Aurora or Prevea, for example, for an MRI. So you could go to an outside provider that was intended to save money. So someone could go to this, get their MRI done, and as a bonus or as a benefit, you would receive $200 in chamber cash. What we discovered was that there were withdrawals or requests for checks to go to the chamber for chamber cash, but we cannot show that those dollars were actually distributed to the employees. That's where we're at. The same with the gift cards also. Gift cards back in the day, and again, part of the problem that we're talking about is this is the way we've always done it, which is something I really, really don't like to hear, because usually when I hear that, that means something is wrong. And gift cards, we don't, and our city attorney would also say that you can't give gift cards out unless you're hitting them with the tax. And obviously we're not hitting anybody with the tax, so we weren't giving the cards out, but the cards disappear. So if we have no documentation, we have no way to follow up on who received, when they received them, and all of that. So again, these are very poor practices that have ceased to exist anymore. They are gone, and they are not happening any further. Thank you. Amanda? Yep, great, thank you. So my question for you is, you've talked a lot about the policies and procedures inside of the mishaps that happened. I'm assuming you have a plan moving forward. When you say the team, are you training as HR, yourself Todd? How are you training your directors? How was this process getting, you know, shared out to the employees so that they feel confident that you are doing the correct steps moving forward, because they're the ones who sort of have suffered in this. So I just want to make sure that we're sort of sharing that message from the top all the way down, saying we understand we made the misstep, here are the practices. Correct, all of that training, as the policies are being updated and corrected, then training goes out accordingly. Department heads have been included in that if there were departments that were directly involved. Also as the findings change, so as the policy, or as an example, let's say disability, you know, gets renewed, then those costs are reviewed with employees at that time, because everybody's a little bit different and unique in how this touches them. So this is being brought up and presented to the employees and department heads, and it's a long procedure, because these are things that we want to be careful and conscious that everybody is a participant in this, and we are trying to protect everyone. So the biggest takeaway is that our policies and procedures are for all, not just individual departments or individual people. So when it comes to insurance or benefits, it's the same for all employees. Right, but you also said that was a long process. I'm trying to make sure that everybody, all the way down to even part-time staff are wearing consistently the same message. Yes, they will. Okay. Do you have a timeline on when you're... Yeah. So part of this discussion, that this is a public forum here for employees to hear this, we certainly know that with the dismissal of a very long-standing employee that sent a message throughout the city, we certainly have known that the changes that have happened within the city, within the HR and finance departments are making a difference, because it has, I guess, rattled the cage in the sense that everyone is aware of these changes happening. There is... We have not tried to conceal anything. It's been very transparent. So as we move forward, we've been in discovery mode for actually several months of finding what else might be there, and we feel pretty confident that we've discovered just about everything that there is to find based on the fact that we've lived six months through this process and we haven't found anything recent or new. The policies and procedures that will be going forward certainly are going to be things that we move forward with as a whole. Again, as Administrator Wolff said, that everyone will be obliged to sign off on them and to understand them. Again, the handbook is... The handbook process, what is exciting about it is that will take the place of a lot of these one-off memos or policies that we had that were not necessarily well known, and so it will supersede everything that's happened before and it will give us a clean slate to be able to say from this point forward, all of these policies that are in our handbook are going to proceed anything else that's out there. So we can start with that clean slate so there aren't any misunderstandings about what the policy is or what the practice is, and it won't belong just to one person to enforce that. It is a team effort, and I think that is very much known within the finance and human resources departments that we are working together as a team, that the culture... I don't know how to describe it, except to say that the culture is so different than when it was even a year ago. It's so much better. It's so much more open. It's so much more in a learning environment that people want to do the right thing, and we've hired good people. So the handbook has been implemented already? The handbook is in its second or third draft right now, and so we are working through that. Our previous handbook was from 2016, and prior to that it was 2011 or 2012, so it hadn't really been well revised. So this handbook is being done outsourced again through our insurance brokers to be compliant with all policy, all laws, and that we will be expecting and presenting this to all the employees so that they will hear it directly from the HR team that this is a new day. Great. Thank you. Jim, put you in your vest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to expand a little bit on what Barb was talking about before, in the old days when I was raised, a situation like this was called stealing, and that's to me is what it was, and I heard from an employee this morning who I respect. I've known her for many years. She's been with the city for many years, and she said that this kind of a situation can tend to be divisive as far as the city employers are concerned. And I really think there should be an audit. If there hasn't been an audit done as part of CLA, I think there should be an audit on exactly how much of the $1,200 was given out to employees who shouldn't have gotten it, and I don't necessarily agree that because it was, in my mind, stealing many of these employees should have known that they shouldn't have got a pass in the $1,200. So I'm hoping you're going to go further on that and at least investigate that. Also, another concern of mine was that people that have retired recently, and I don't know, we ought to go back five years, 10 years, whatever the case may be, with the lack of policies to determine whether people were getting the proper amount from the Wisconsin Retirement Fund, whether they were retiring with the amount, credit for the amount of vacation they had or other benefits you retire with from the city, do you think there's an audit that's required to go back and adjudicate and look at the employees that have retired, pick out a number of years, five years, and see, I'm just as concerned about the people who are probably not getting enough, as to maybe people that are getting more than they should have. Do you think there's an audit necessary to go back and check on that? Alderborn, you bring up some really good points and the hardest part about this whole situation is where do you dig and how deep do you dig and how much money do you spend when you've already lost some funds? And then you have to step back from there and say, okay, we can spend a lot of money looking for what some may think is a lot of money and then how do you get that money back and then how many people does it touch and how big a problem do you really have? What I really would like to point out is the fact that some of these areas, because we have good employees, we have to remember we have good people that work for the city. And I tend to use examples a lot. How many times have you gone to the grocery store and you buy something and you realize, oh, they didn't charge me for this? How many people run back to the store and say, oh, by the way, you forgot to charge me for this or you're at a restaurant and they forget to charge you for a beverage or an appetizer or something? Things happen. Now with the city, it's a lot different and I understand that. That doesn't mean that every employee necessarily understood exactly what benefits they were being given because a benefit is something that you are receiving that somebody is giving you and if they're giving it to you, you don't necessarily run around and say, oh, by the way, Mr. Bourne, did you get this because I got this or Mr. Decker, did you get this because I got this? Again, we don't do all of that. The issue is that we can dig to a certain degree and we can find out certain things like the retirement piece. We did look into that. We want to make sure that our retirees are getting what they need and that they're not getting additional benefits that they should be getting or shouldn't be getting. And we've done our due diligence on that because part of it is our OPEB report making sure that our liabilities are accurate and that's a very serious report. And even with that report, we have some deficiencies on that that we've obviously turned up and we're working on that moving forward. As far as going back to say, five years ago you didn't pay for this or two years ago you didn't pay for that, it would take a lot of time, money, and it would cause a lot of strife in my opinion within our city, within our company and is it really worth the benefit? Is that money really worth going and digging into to find out that somebody got something that somebody else didn't? My recommendation to the leadership council in our prior council was that we need to move forward. We have policies and procedures that are going into place. We have due diligence, we have separation of duties. These situations happen in other municipalities. We've talked with CIVMIC, our insurance carrier, and this happens more than any of us want to hear. It happens to other cities, other communities and that's why we are being due diligent in digging up everything we can and we've even asked for best practices. What other areas have we not looked into that maybe we should be? We are doing our due diligence in moving forward and I get it, not everybody got the benefit of whatever that benefit was, but it doesn't make sense in my opinion to cause a lot of strife within our community. We have bigger things to fix moving forward. Thank you. Another concern is that I saw during the report was the sick bank for the fire department. Was that discussed at all during the recent contract negotiations or wasn't the bargaining team, the city's bargaining team aware of that situation? And then do you think an audit is needed to get the proper value on that and hopefully work something out with the fire union? And I guess the same thing could be said for the police department sick leave pool. I know there were some issues with that. Where are we with that and what do you recommend we do? Aldebron, that's a very good point and that is still on our list of many things that we are working on. No director of HR and union negotiations, obviously we found out about this in January, the end of December? Yeah, after negotiations at the end of the year, the fire department came to Vicki and said, by the way we have, was it 26 days? So this was discovered through a communication with the fire department that they were making a notification to the human resources department that 26 days of the communal pool had been used and I had to ask for an explanation because I hadn't known there was anything outside their own individual sick pools and then that was when I learned that there was a communal pool that employees could pull from if they had already exhausted all their other days. So that led to conversation and again, we started to dig in what does this mean, what is the value of it, where does this exist and it exists in the historical documents of the fire department, that it has been, there's a clear path that this has been in place since about 1985, that this practice has been in place. Right, so the practice itself as firefighters were able to contribute to a sick bank, once they hit a limit it would go into their communal pool and again that was, on my part I did not know that that existed and I did not understand the significance of that nor did I understand the magnitude at that point of how large that communal pool is or was and that is something that again through the audit that that was, we explored that and that is something that we are going to continue to work through because we need to put a value on it as administrator will mention there's an OPEB report which is meant to quantify our liability as far as what our other benefits that retirees would receive and so we need to quantify that so that we have that liability noted and that was an area that had never been quantified in past audits or past documentation and we need to do that going forward as well. If I could have one more, Mr. Chairman. Well, we're running late late and I have a couple more. Alright, go ahead. You don't mind, thank you. I'm going to go to Roberta. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I heard two things in the process of not the discussion but the presentation. The first was we were going outside of the software system and that was possibly one of the reasons that caused all the issues. Yes, yes. And you talked about with the advent of muness that would that would be alleviated is muness up and running for the HR department or do we have to wait longer for muness to be up and running? So we are working through, so we use a portion of the HR components of muness and we have always done that for the past, I would say eight years or so. The benefits module is one that we had not used or we had used it about three years ago and then we stopped using it and I don't understand exactly why that decision was made but we are going to be using it this year and so we are as a team have worked with muness and there's PACE dollars, which is the education that our team will receive and that's scheduled for two days in July. That's going to be intensive training on how to use that. We just had a conversation with our brokers earlier today that they are able to assist us in not only doing the open enrollment for all employees, but they will also then be able to assist us in getting that information directly into muness so that we don't have to worry about not having that in place. So one of the things that happened just for your own understanding is that there was a lot of use of Excel spreadsheets instead of and manual spreadsheets instead of using the system and so it was very easy to take information and manipulate it in a different kind of way rather than using the system that everyone has access to. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to expand on that. I've explained to the council for many months that we've had Tyler muness for many, many, many years and again with no oversight and no upper management direction, modules have been turned on, turned off and we haven't been utilizing the system to its fullest. Moving forward and I believe I said this last year in 2021 we are implementing not just the upgrade but we're actually implementing the modules and purchasing additional modules to make the city more efficient and through that efficiency we're going to actually have the separation of duties. We're actually going to have the ability that when people go in and make a transaction or make an adjustment that they're tagged. We know who did it, when it was done and why it was done. And again it's not too harm employees, it's to help protect employees. Okay, the other thing I heard, I heard the software system muness and I heard the ability to override and the insurance, are we okay with our insurance carriers? Are they helping? Yes, our insurance carriers have been stellar and we had a new team that joined us and they have been instrumental in helping us get through this. When we were first going through this in December and January I had daily, sometimes multiple times a day conversations about what was going on and how they would be able to help us. They have been very upfront about giving us the reports that we need, the processes that we need to put into place and knowing that again we have the relationships so that this cannot happen again. So again the way that this happened was that there were underlying or separate relationships beyond the normal protocols. And so there can't, we have practices in place now that that can't happen without another set of eyes seeing that and then coming back to the city to say is this right, is this normal, is this what you intended to do? And they've received these reports themselves, they've been part of the audit process themselves and they're very cognizant about everything that we've been going through. Great, thank you. Grazia. Yes, I do also have it share the concern that employees may have lost benefits that they may come back to the city for. I mean, I don't know if there is any legal possibility of that to happen. So I share the concern that other person born and Savagno mentioned. But actually my question is for the future. What is the plan for auditing and who would do that, how often? Can you say the question again? I'm sorry. What is the plan about auditing the processes? I'm not talking about financial auditing, about auditing the processes from now on for. Thank you. We've actually put in dual approval systems in place. So not only like it as far as HR related items, Vicki and like a generalist would be actually auditing each other in payroll. We have multiple people actually auditing each other and then they get audited. We can pull reports to make sure I'm actually receiving like a lot of the billings so that I can review it and ask questions why things fluctuate like they do. So we have multiple department heads and team members in place so that we're keeping each other in check month to month not letting things go downstream. To follow up. So I can also share that one of the things that's been instrumental as I shared earlier in one of the slides was the personal change notifications. And so we established a process so that if there was a pay increase, if there was a change in classification, if there was a job change, a title change, all of that has to be documented and uploaded and it goes through a set of approvals. We're looking at obviously the work between the human resources and finance department so that we can assure each other and that of course that everything goes through Administrator Wolf right now to make sure that we're doing the right things at the right time in the right way. So for payroll, there's a payroll audit that happens for any kind of retiree benefit now where we just met again today that there's a lot of work in process to get these things in place so that not just one person is controlling this, that it has to go through a set of either permissions through the software system so that that money or those dollars can't be released without another person's oversight and that's where the finance department is going to be crucial in how we establish those differences and changes. So I understand with all the corrective actions you have put in place but who is going to audit that those are actually working and I understand that you may audit each other but what I'm seeing is that there must be some type of assessment, preferably external maybe in the beginning on an annual basis or maybe every other year but there must be a way to actually audit that the process that you are putting in place right now as new processes are actually working. So you're talking about having CLA or another outside auditing firm coming because I do believe that that would be something that based on the experience that we've had that we would continue to do this on an annual basis because that is one of the recommendations from CLA as well is that there is an annual benefits audit or this timeliness so that we're not... Yes, we're watching ourselves but we're also inviting others in so that we are as transparent as we can be. So that would be either CLA or another auditing firm that we would be working with. Yes, and I know that the recommendation was for fraud assessment, risk assessment. Again, I think that since you are changing processes because we said that this is not... This was an issue with processes. This was an issue with management. This was an issue with lack of oversight and so on. So what I'm talking about is assessment of the new processes. I mean, it's fantastic what you're saying and the good intentions and there are good employees, no doubt but there will be a need for assessing your changes. And, Grazia, we will be budgeting to have audits done on a regular basis and I agree with you. One of the things that we had asked for from CLA was giving us best practices so it's not that we have to create where we need to be, they are telling us what we need to do to be able to be the most efficient and effective at our policies and procedures. So once we have that, we'll be able to have them come in and do an audit and it wouldn't make sense unless we did it like at least a year and a half from now because of the cycle time that it's going to take to have everything implemented and a cycle of our insurance and benefits going through. But that is something that I'm actually very strongly requesting because of the fact that we need somebody to help keep us in check because you can have all the policies in the world but if you don't audit and you don't actually check your audits you don't have a policy. Thank you. Mayor Sorensen. Thank you. I told Vicki and Todd I was going to do this if they didn't do it. But I do just want to underline the fact that this audit was completed and done primarily because of Todd and Vicki's excellent work and asking questions and digging in and fixing the issues that have been ignored or allowed to occur for the many, many years. I keep saying they don't give themselves enough credit for digging in and getting their hands dirty and starting to identify the problems and instead of leaning back and ignoring them they leaned in, they asked questions they got their hands dirty they said why is this happening this way they challenged the status quo and they got a lot of stuff done and identifying where the issues were I think that foundationally needs to be where we start so I just wanted to commend them and their work on that and just making sure that the council knows moving forward in the future this needs to be a big lesson for all of us and I appreciate the discussion and questions that are happening today too but the buck really stops with the council and the city leadership as well and making sure that we're asking the proper questions that we're getting involved saying hey why do we do it this way and if someone says we've always done it this way you're identifying those patterns and you're saying okay well wait a minute you know give me some more thought of why we do it this way and why it's always been done that way how can we do things more efficiently how can we make sure that taxpayer dollars are being respected so I think Fikki and Todd for further work on this I know it's been pretty time consuming but I have full faith in both of them in getting a handle of this moving forward but you know it's not just them alone it's city staff, it's department heads but it's also the council members who are doing our part on this so those are just the comments I want to add thanks we're really running short barb is it something quick you had your microphone on did you I know I'm going to get it up I'm going to get hit with the spousal third charge was $1,200 was a little over $1,200 last month and if I'm understanding all of this right they've kicked some of that for some but not for others and I did a little multiplication we're talking $14,000 plus dollars per year for that spousal third charge am I right that would be approximately yes where you're right so there's two different things that the city offers the spousal third charge is if your spouse has insurance at I understand that part they would pay an additional $1,200 to be on the city's insurance if their spouse had insurance elsewhere if you opt out you get $100 per month so it's $1,200 total and then if you are opting out of the city's insurance you also you can't have both but if you opt out of insurance you also could get $100 a month for taking insurance elsewhere okay thank you I do want to point out though we have over 300 employees on insurance about 330 employees on insurance other companies corporations actually pay companies to take care of their spousal third charge why do I say that because what you need to do is not just fill out a sheet saying yes my spouse has insurance or doesn't have insurance but typically they actually have to follow up and find out from the company so just because I would say my spouse doesn't have insurance capability somebody should be following up and auditing that to make sure it didn't happen okay real quick one Jim we're really running it's going to be real quick first of all there was about I think four I've got them listed here I'm not going to read them I don't have time but there was a number of forensic audits that were recommended by CLA are we going to go ahead with those forensic audits on the various ones they're recommending and then my second question is we don't have this report collect dust and we don't pay attention to it are your intentions to give quarterly or semiannual reports like you're doing with the audit from the finance department going ahead for the finance and personnel committee that we're going to get regular updates as to what's going on Vicki and I have talked about quarterly updates and she's been doing that since she took the position so we will be updating everybody on a quarterly basis and then we'll open to where we're going I'll be real quick part of our presenting this to you is to get the recommendations from the council so that we can move ahead with what we need to be able to do to be successful because we can't do this alone could you put these four or five audits that are being requested by CLA could you put those on the agenda of the finance and personnel committee and maybe give your pros and cons between each audit and let the council have some input on whether we do those or not we can do that thank you so do you want a do we want to do a recommendation with that or do we want to go forward with do we want to make a motion to send something to the council or send it to finance and personnel do you want to make a motion something like that Jim is that what you're looking for the finance and personnel committee reports on the on the progress of the CDL recommendations and also that the the items that were pointed out for forensic audits that those specific items go to the finance and personnel committee and have Todd and Vicki give their pros and cons on whether we should go ahead with those specific forensic audits we have a motion and second have any discussion on that at all okay all those in favor aye any opposed chair votes aye that is approved okay I guess we wrap things up I just wanted to make one quick comment on this I'm very pleased with the the openness of this I mean that's one thing that I've been disappointed in the past with with you know when we had the problems with the finance department and things like that coming forward we were kind of left in the dark a lot and I this this is what I like to see openness that we're that this is brought forward sometimes it's not always pleasant to see the bad things that you know that have gone on but it's necessary and I'm just glad we've done that I would entertain a motion to adjourn from someone then motion has been made and seconded all those in favor aye any opposed we are adjourned