Politics & Government

Findings in the Audit of University City

Petition audit highlights financial mismanagement; sunshine law violations.

The findings of the University City petition audit reveal financial mismanagement and a handful of Sunshine Law violations.

State Auditor Tom Schweich released the audit results at a public meeting on Thursday evening.

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THE FINDINGS:

Trash Service Billing and Collection:

University City has failed to collect trash service fees from 3,373 citizen accounts, totaling $1.6 million.

Employment Contract:

University City paid $97,400 in severance pay to its former City Manager Julie Feier. If Feier's termination date had been just 8 days later, the City would have saved $28,600.

Current City Manager Lehman Walker has the same severance pay clause in his employment agreement.

Cost Allocations and Administrative Transfers:

University City paid outside law firms over $230,000 in 2010, including $43,000 for City Attorney services, but never did an analysis to determine in outsourcing legal services makes fiscal sense.

University City did not solicit proposals for legal services to make sure it received the best value and does not have written agreements with its legal services providers.

University City paid $146,000 to settle a discrimination case instead of only paying a $15,000 deductible, because it failed to notify its insurance company promptly.

Parking Garage Operations:

The City does not adequately supervise the operations of the parking facility.

The City has not conducted an analysis to determine whether outsourcing management of the parking facility makes fiscal sense and has not rebid the contract since 1997.

Accounting Controls:

The City needs to improve its accounting controls in order to ensure transactions are accounted properly. When the Collector's Office collects monies from other departments, the amounts are not immediately verified and entered into the system, and receipt slips are not given to the departments.

City Budget and Financial Reports:

The Finance Director increased the fiscal year 2011 budgeted expenditures by $276,000, after the budget had been approved by the City Council.

Minutes, Meetings and Public Records:

The City Council did not document the reasons or the votes regarding meeting closures, as required by state law.

Personnel:

The City salary survey did not use cities of comparable size, so it is unclear if salaries are in line with salaries in similar cities.

The scope of the audit included, but was not necessarily limited to, the year ending June 30, 2010. Schweich said at the beginning of the audit, petitioners provided three binders full of concerns that they had about the way the City was being run. "Just because something does not appear in the audit does not mean we didn't look at it. We did look at everything," he said.


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