Move forward

Dear Editor,

There is an old expression that says if you are in a hole and want to get out quit digging.

The controversy in the City Council of the “missing” $3.7 million is without question a hole. But it is not a hole that is likely to be filled because, from all appearances, it appears to be money that was spent but not properly accounted for. It seems to be something of a waste of energy, irrespective of the strong emotions involved on both sides of the discussion, to spend all your time on the past without doing something about the future that would prevent this from occurring again.

Again, from the outside the real issue appears to be that the city has not followed sound accounting practices for a number of years. In the corporate world, the city has operated with ongoing “significant deficiencies” and, more importantly, “material weaknesses” in its accounting. These are terms of art in the accounting world but simply mean that the books cannot be expected to accurately reflect what the actual numbers are and should not be relied on to do so.

The source of this difficulty would appear to be the decision to pool all revenue sources into a single bank account and withdraw it as needed to pay bills. This ignores the fact that some revenue sources are for specific purposes while others are

The council should establish a separate account for every earmarked revenue source and one for the general purposes revenue. It appears that the earmarked revenues have been subsidizing the general general budget for years and, initially, funds from the earmarked accounts will be needed to balance the general budget.

When money is moved from one account to another that should be documented. The account “lending” the money to the general account should record an account receivable asset on its accounts and the city should record an account payable liability on the general purpose account. Over time the goal should be to eliminate the need to these inter account transfers. If, as it appears, the general fund requires more funding than its current revenue sources provide then one of two things should happen: it should either develop a discrete revenue source to balance the budget or reduce the budget to fit the revenue dedicated to that purpose.

I believe a lot of time has been wasted while trying to reconstruct the past, which we now know cannot be reconciled due to the lack of the records required to complete that analysis. The better answer is to quit digging and move forward in a fashion that does not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Signed,

Keith Bailey

Saratoga, Wyoming