Recommendation to Accept the Fiscal Year 2018-19 Audited Financial Statements and Compliance Reports. [City Council/SACIC] (Finance 2410)
Well, this year there is no management discussion of analysis because there was nobody qualified at the management level to discuss the results of operations. This, again, is serious. So I guess I will conclude with this. I hope that you see that this is a significant problem, that you give it the adequate funding. And I hope this doesn't happen again because this this this is this is bad. On a positive note, let's end on something positive. I wanted to thank personally Nancy Braunstein, who took over from her position as the head of h.R. And fulfilled this role as interim finance director. And I think for some, I think she did the best job she could. I got emails from her at all hours of the day and night. We had a lot of conversation and I think that she did a fantastic job in the breach. But. You know, putting her in that position, in my opinion, was a very, very tough assignment. And I congratulate her. And I just hope that the council feels that this is important, as equally as important as I do. Thank you for the time. Thank you, Mr. Rooney. We do. And I appreciate you bringing these things to our attention. And I also second your thanks to Nancy Bronstein, who did an amazing job in the midst of all the COVID crisis. Madam Clerk, do we still have two other speakers on these items? Yes, we still have two more people with their Henrys. Hopefully we can clarify and make sure they want to discuss that. Next is Aaron Frazer. 30. Good evening. I was hoping to comment on non agenda items and. Sorry. We're not quite. No, no worries. It's confusing. We're not quite there yet. We're going to wrap up this special meeting on the, ah successor agency to the the old redevelopment agency, essentially. So hold tight and we will get back to you. Okay. And the other person lowered their hand. So they probably were also oral communications that we haven't gotten to yet. So. Okay. That is it. Okay. Very good. So then could we have a a motion to approve the consent calendar, which is items to a to be in to see vice mayor? Then I have a question for staff, please. The city manager, Leavitt, the auditor, noted a number of times that the city council needed to fund or provide the. But I guess my question here very quickly, I know that we have a lot. None of. It is there. I didn't see in the audit where it said we hadn't budgeted for enough staff. My understanding is that staff left and that we didn't have that. But we changed the budget so that there's a staffing concern that was out in the budget discussion. Mr. HARVEY. Yes, I can I can address a couple of those that question. I'll try to do it quickly. First of all, I agree with the city auditor on some of those concerns. I share those concerns and have. And so, for instance, this year, I'm closing the books. Well, right now we're scheduled to close the books, and that's a very technical term, but we're scheduled to close the books probably a good four months plus earlier than we did last year. And I think that's because of the excellent work Nancy's done in working with the staff. We had three key positions, two key positions just coming in in this calendar year, 2020. At the same time, the finance director left some of these issues, and my experience from past should never have happened. We're working to correct that, and I think we're putting the staff in place, including a new finance director, to to make sure that these things don't occur. Going forward, we are I think we did add one staff position, and I think that city auditor referred to that. We're trying to be cognizant of the budget and the budget constraints, especially with COVID and its impacts on the budget, but at the same time make sure that we utilize our staffing to the fullest extent. I think Nancy's working on that and we're recruiting, and he did refer to the two new accounts we're bringing in. So part of it was that it was budgetary. Part of it was we had several vacancies also on finance. And you. And I would just ask thank you for those questions, Vice Mayor. And I will note that as mayor, I'm interviewed each year by the auditor. And and, you know, I expressed some concerns. But, Mr. Levitt, could you just give the council and the public an idea of where you are in the hiring process? Because, as the city auditor noted, we are both without a finance director and I believe an assistant finance director as well. Is that correct? We don't have an assistant finance director position in the city of Alameda. And the person that would be sort of the second person in the city for accounting purposes, she came in after the first year. So her thing was typically this audit would have been done by January one. So her thing was trying to catch up. And I think she did work with the auditor on that, the the finance director themselves. Right now, as of today, we're in the process and probably in the next week will be offering a position to a finance director position. And if we come to agreement, we hope by hopefully Labor Day or shortly after that, we'll have a new finance director in place, or maybe even shortly before that, we'll have a new finance director in place. Okay. And so I imagine that council might like to have an update on this item. Just. Moving forward to today. Tell us what progress you've made. And I see Councilmember Desai with his hand out. Yes, thank you very much. I just want to make several quick points. One is I just want to express my appreciation to the city auditor, Kevin Kearney, for for emphasizing the key points that were raised in the memo. I think that was exhibit seven. I think while there are several new key points, that memo also goes over some of the issues that were identified in previous years, including, you know, where we are with regard to how we handle those issues. So that's an important memo. The second point I want to indicate is, you know, it's really important to have complete full reports available for the public because that's the whole point of the the audit the audit, exhibit one. So I want to make sure to to double emphasized the need to have a complete and full report so that the public can can can look at the issues while we're on the subject of of Exhibit one. Their full 200 page audit. When I'm going over it, you know, the thing that I'm always looking for is the is especially the fun balance to see if if where we were at last year, we were relatively healthy. And I would encourage I mean, there's 200 pages. There's just so many things to look at. So. So I try to figure out, you know, what are the few things out there that to me, you know, that I should really be aware of. So in terms of the the reserves, I would certainly direct your attention to page 85 of 205 or 85 of 205. Yeah. There you'll find a nice table that that expresses where we are with regard to our reserve. The total reserve that we have on that page is $41 million, believe it or not. So so if you do the math, you know, we're doing we have a fund balance of more than 40%. So, you know, we have to we still have to be cautious because obviously COVID 19 is going to throw us a curveball, like it's going to throw many people a curve ball. But that's our total, the amount that we have not available or available like it's so the credit is so tiny is something like 20 million. So so we have like roughly $20 million of, of, of fund balance that's available to us and another $20 million. So I'm rounding the numbers here that we've already reserved, but, well, $41 million out of a total expenditure of $9,099 million or so is certainly something to be proud about. You know, I think things like the where the economy is now and where where we'll be with the continuing COVID 19, I think, you know, we have got to hang on to our reserves. So I just want to end by saying let's make sure to have the the full publications available to the public as early as possible . Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember this like any other council comments. All right. So Councilor Vice Mayor Knox White. I was just ready to make a motion to approve of the audit. Please do. Okay. I mean, actually, the whole consent calendar. Do you want to pull that one out separately? Yeah, I guess. Sorry. I thought we had several removed from the calendar. Okay. There will be one less roll call vote. If we did a consent calendar, we had a motion by the vice mayor to have a second second. It's been seconded by Councilmember De. So any further discussion since then? We have the roll call vote, please. Councilmember de SAG. Hi. Knox. Wait, Odie. Yes. Bella. I. Mayor, as the Ashcraft high net carries by five eyes. Thank you, everyone. Okay, so we now adjourn the the joint meeting of the city council and the successor agency to the Community Improvement Commission. And we move on to the regular city council meeting. Roll call, please. Rocco has been noted. Five present. Thank you. And so then the next item is agenda changes. And I want to throw out a couple of ideas council, but it's whatever the majority's pleasure is. So we are starting this well after we get past a rather lengthy closed I mean consent calendar over on page eight, we start with a couple of short should be fairly short items and on six day we have staff waiting literally outside. So we don't want to leave them there. Too long. I my suggestion and see what you think is that. Although item six C was withdrawn and revised and added to a revised special meeting because some new information was discovered that had to be added to the staff report that threw the timing off. I would propose that we hear this item about the proposed charter amendment, also known as Measure A after A and B, and then then we go ahead to hear the item six D, which is the the appeal of the Planning Board's decision on the K Avenue property. Then I would suggest, because I think there are a number of speakers that we hear the Jackson Park item after that and then the Greenway Golf lease and just then go into the rest of the regular items. And so fairly, fairly quickly, well as quickly as possible, move through those items. So if anyone agrees with me. But I don't want to spend too much time in deliberation because we want to just keep things moving along. Councilmember Vela. To send mute. I'm fine with those agenda changes. Okay. I'm seeing a counselor O.D. nodding his head. Is that fine? Okay. Have you kept track of them, though? I did. And the city called the city clerk and I discussed this this morning. I was just trying to be efficient, so. Do we need a vote on this? We do. Okay. So was that a motion by statement? Okay. Vice Mayor move. Councilor Oti seconded roll call vote. Any further discussion thing then? May we have a roll call vote, please? Councilmember de SAG. Hi. Next, right. Hi, Odie. I Bella. Hi there. As Ashcraft, I carries my five eyes. Thank you, everyone. And so now the next item would normally be proclamation special orders of the day and announcements. This is what I'm going to do. This is kind of an accelerated adjournment. No, we're not leaving early. But it was my intention. And I think you would all agree to adjourn this memory tonight in memory of Congressman John Lewis, an icon of the civil rights movement who passed away last week at the age of 80. So I just wanted to quote one of his many quotes, and I haven't had the chance yet to watch the documentary. John Lewis, good trouble, but I've heard some great reviews of it. So. So look that one up when you've got a minute. But one of the things, one of his quotes and this is a man who was known as the conscience of the Congress and managed to reach across both sides of the aisle and touch and influence his colleagues in all parties. But he was known to say, if not me, who? If not now, when? And I think that's something that all of us take very seriously. And it just is all the more timely today with everything before us. So we will adjourn our meeting in his memory at the end of the agenda. But it's a long one in for anyone in the audience who might not still be with us. I just wanted you to know that we are going to do that. So then we come to oral communications, and this is where a limited number of speakers may address the Council regarding any any item that is not on the agenda. We are like 15 minutes for these public comments. Now, if they can't finish in that allotted amount of time, there's another time, another opportunity at the end of the agenda. So I think we may have a speaker to enter oral communications. Do we, Madam Clerk? Yes. Yes, we do. First is Aaron Frazer. And can you tell us how many we have? Because that helps us. We have two and then I think we have one zoom comment to read. Okay. So it sounds like 3 minutes apiece. Good evening. Hi. Welcome back. Thank you. So I have some, uh, just to two quick things, and I'll, I'll be brief. The first is I would like to renew my call for all city council members to publicly state their opposition to any public safety unions conducting any independent expenditures or other campaign activity on their behalf. I think this is an easy thing as we're going through this special time for the city council to say, you know what, we're not going to take money from a special interest group that is opposed to us reforming them. I think it's pretty much straight forward. I know. I think actually a majority of you have agreed to this concept, but you haven't so publicly stated. So I encourage you to do so. That's comment number one. Comment number two is in contrast to the public health crisis. For discussion on tonight's agenda, I want to urge the City Council to take seriously the public health emergency of racism and declare such an emergency rather than take baby steps towards talking about, talking about.