Supplier Detail, Deja Vu
Monday, June 24, 2013 @ 8:10 PM
Prince George, B.C.- Here we go again.
In looking at the City’s Annual Financial report, Councillor Brian Skakun wanted to know a few more details on some of the amounts paid to individual suppliers. He said he wanted specifics on 5 suppliers because he doesn’t know what services they provide.
He started with BWP Consulting. “I just want to know what they do”. As it turns out, BWP provides mosquito control. He said he only had 5 suppliers he would like to have information about. Skakun says he didn’t need an invoice by invoice breakdown, just some basic simple information on what kind of services the company provides.
It may have seemed like deja vu for many at the Council table as this is a scenario that was played out earlier this year. It ended up with 250News filing an FOI to get the clarification Skakun was looking for on seven suppliers. ( see previous story) That FOI request was answered in about two weeks and included far more detail than is being requested by Skakun this time around.
Mayor Shari Green was not receptive to having staff come back with more detail on each and every invoice, “My first concern is this could lead to an extensive piece of work for staff to do, depending on who it is, and what it is, and we’ve had a pretty lengthy explanation when this was brought up earlier in the year to what it takes to amass where these invoices are and for what projects.” She maintained that Skakun’s request would spark “ an onerous piece of work, and that is why I am not interested in sending our staff on a wild goose chase.”
Mayor Green says when it comes to BWP Consulting “ I don’t know what they do either, and I don’t know that I need to know what they do in order for staff to provide services in the City.”
Councillor Dave Wilbur says at the end of the day, he has curiosity, but he could not support “random curiosity.”
“We are not rubber stampers, and we are not micro-managers” said Councillor Garth Frizzell. He said Council is called upon to approve items, and he would like to see the issue discussed further to find the dividing line between the two ends of that scale.
Councillor Lyn Hall says he’s trying to see how there might be a better way to outline the general services provided by a supplier “Each individual invoice, that’s not what we’re about, that’s not our job.”
But adding a column to the report that would generate information on the kind of services provided by a supplier would “be very onerous” said Director of Financial Services Kathleen Soltis, “ It would take quite a bit of time, and our people are working on priority projects”.
Councillor Frank Everitt was also not in favour of a line by line breakdown but he too supported the idea of general information on the type of services provided by any supplier on the list.
In the end, Councillor Skakun said he will not move the matter through a Notice of Motion, “I’m not going to do a notice of motion because I’m asking some simple questions, I’m not asking for complete breakdowns, so, simple enough.”
Councillor Skakun could still file a Freedom of Information request .
Comments
maybe Mr. Skakum should learn the joys of Google. It took me .16th of a second to find out what BWP consulting does.
What kind of books is the City keeping? Even Simply Accounting asks for a description when you post an invoice.
Hit “Print Detailed G/L” and send the report to Skakun. It’ll show the description of every invoice. It can’t take more than 30 seconds. If you’re worried about the cost of the paper, then send it to him as a .pdf
He’s a City Councillor. It doesn’t matter why he wants the information. We elected him–if he wants the information, he should get the information.
I totally agree with Icicle. With computer programs having more and more capability it should only take about 1-2 hours to come up with this information.
Mr. Skakun isn’t asking for details on everything. He is doing the job he is being elected to do. We don’t need rubber stamping going on. There should be a little bit of questioning done by city council.
I think we need to know if we are getting value for money. I seem to remember in the previous story we had L & M engineering getting paid a huge dollar per hour to count people on Winnipeg st. If I remember right I think it was something around $180/hour.
This City needs to be run with some efficiency. Keeping city staff on their toes and even the businesses that contract to the City on their toes is a GOOD thing.
Google gives us what is already on the City website….do your homework BS.
http://princegeorge.ca/cityliving/parks/mosquitocontrolprogram/Pages/Default.aspx
Brian, I’m sure your heart’s in the right place but really, as was mentioned before. It actually took less then 5 seconds on Google to find that BWP does bug control.
Sorry but this just looks like wasting staff time on something you could find yourself in minutes.
I totally agree with Icicle and mwk, and I said as much when this came up last time.
Anyone who is familiar with modern electronic bookkeeping knows that a reasonable system is capable of having a scanned image of any kind of document linked to an invoice, that fields can be set up to identify exactly what the invoice is for, when it was paid, who authorized it, what po it is attached to, what project it is attached to, what budget code is used, etc. etc.
What it does take though, is staff who understand it and who can train data entry clerks to properly post the info so that it can be relocated and does not get lost because of spelling errors and unwanted space characters.
As the link to the 250NEWS article shows, BWP was one of the topics again.
So, what is really astounding is that not a single person, including the Mayor, Soltis, other councillors, and most of all Skakun recalled that it was a mosquito control contractor …. except when the new City Manager butted in because she was itching to take some control of what her staff was and was not providing for the Council she reports to.
In fact, just as the protocol is for Councillors to speak through the Mayorâs chair, the same should hold for the City Manager and her staff. She knew who the contractor was and she has been on her job for less than 2 months. And she also had some semblance of understanding of the oversight duty of a Council, which goes considerably beyond setting protocol in place, but actually goes to testing it at random to see whether it is working properly.
Skakun is on the right track. He is doing his job as a Councillor. Green and Spitz are far too flippant about their responsibilities as far as I can see. Anyone who has some experience on Boards would be able to see that right away by watching a rerun of tonightâs Council meeting.
The mindset is one of keeping things hidden from the very people who ought to understand what goes on and who does mosquito control and why they come from Kamloops rather than Vanderhoof or, heaven forbid, PG.
There are many cities that have internal auditors to do the work Skakun is hinting at. They then also have an audit committee – I think we have a finance and audit committee which is headed by Spitz. Problem is, he is not doing his duty and neither are too many others.
Skakum does his job and people get upset. Loosen your shorts folks.
“It actually took less then 5 seconds on Google to find that BWP does bug control.”
I do not think it is sinking in to some on here what Brian is after. He wants to makes sure people who are in charge know what they are doing and who has oversight responsibilities and what exactly that entails these days.
It is simple, a financial report is being presented and it is proper to be asking questions to randomly probe what is being presented. And no, an external auditor does not do that and council does not get to ask an external auditor. They just read the form letter.
This would have taken 5 minutes for staff to prit off this informaton. Why shouldn’t a Councillor question City spending? Maybe it was someone’s husband’s buddy and he got the job because of his friendship. Then we would be upset because council should’t have let this confict of interest happen. The same ones complaining about Skakun’s questions would have been the ones complaining about council not doing their job.
I think its either a cover up or incompetence. Both are simply unacceptable in public office.
The questions Brian asks should be routine audit questions asked by a competent councilor that wants to be on top of ensuring adequate oversight not of the invoices, but of the accounting for invoices. The excuses given for not being forthright are disingenuous and reek of entitlement.
City hall needs to be cleaned out. We need a whole new mayor and council and first thing they should do is start replacing management with people competent enough to do the job.
It has nothing to do with micromanaging and everything to do with oversight.
One may not like Mr. Skakun but as a taxpayer one should like the fact that he wants more detailed information than what the councillors are getting now! Have there ever been reports of scam artists sending fake invoices for services never rendered to governments and businesses? The answer of course is – Yes! Every tax dollar needs to be accounted for, always! And with transparency! The mayor doesn’t know what BWP is charging the city for? She says she is not sure she needs to know! The issue here is not whether staff is providing the service or not, but what each invoice is for and if it is legit.
Actually random curiosity is the best kind of curiosity there is because it is random: One never knows when the inspector drops in to check the business or the books! Revenue Canada does it all the time and so do food and restaurant inspectors!
So, add the column to your ledger and have it readily available for those who wish to have ALL the information!
Brian Skakun for Mayor!
metalman.
I wonder when the city’s auditors ask – who’s this and what did you pay them for, if Soltis would have the guts to say “I don’t know – why, does it matter?”
Unfortunately the city’s accounting system is probably like a lot of large organizational systems, fairly useless in providing detailed info – which Simply accounting and Quickbooks are very good at.
Generally if you go through the GL, and look under say repairs, you’ll find single entries called batch XXX and batch XXY and so on. Then, you have to run another report that shows the detail of the batch.
If you run a report on a supplier, it will likely just show invoice numbers entered, but not what account, but what batch etc. That said, I suppose someone could have gone to the filing cabinet and started with the drawer marked “B” and just pulled the invoice – except – they probably are filing them by the batch #’s so they can trace them back from the G.L. If it wasn’t fraud, I’d love to send the city an invoice and see if they actually pay it.
“wild goose chase” is defined as “A futile pursuit or search”…..so does that mean that City staff is not able to find this information?
Can cities be audited by Revenue Canada? I don’t think they would accept the mayor’s answers.
There is an auditor general of municipalities in place now.
They will tread softly for a few years, I am sure, till they have some good information from a significant number of communities with a wide population range and geographical distribution.
They will likely focus on comparative costs of similar goods and services in various communities. That will then give them the tools to raise awareness amongst communities of how they may be able to improve.
If nothing happens, then look to the province to legislate change into the Community Charter.
It is a long term project. In the meantime, those communities that understand what they need to do to become more transparent will be working in parallel with the office, the others will simply go on their belligerent ways.
Given the repeated show of last night, it is not that difficult to figure where we will fit in …… the wild card is the new City Manager. If she wishes to, she can do the turnaround in a nice diplomatic way and a few sit downs with the Mayor of the day after she has gotten some high level administrators converted to her way of thinking.
So, it will be interesting to watch what will happen. Watch Council and watch the body language. I wish cameras could be fixed on several people at the same time as they are in some other Council livestreaming.
+1 metalman
“As it turns out, BWP provides mosquito control” .. then they aren’t doing their jobs because this is the first year in a lot of years where mosquitos are actually a nuisance downtown. I want a refund.
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