Barry Allen’s Comments on Glendale Finances in the 05-18-08 Vanguard Weekly News

City Staff messes with information to Council for decision making reducing the time for questions and responses:

* The Budget must be approved by June 30 and there is already a public hearing scheduled for June 10. Yet there have been only two budget study sessions. There is no study session on Tuesday May 20. May 27th will be taken up by fire overtime and solutions to reduce it. There will be study sessions on June 3rd and 10th. A total of 5 study sessions to work out the details of a $10,000,000 deficit and a $700,000,000 budget.

* The $30,000,000 Beeline budget was to have been to Council so they could make a decision in April. It is scheduled to be heard on May 27th. Unless the City keeps MV Transportation there will be less than 30 work days for the transition.

The Council is being disenfranchised by Staff and their lack of proper project management:

* Treasurer Ron Borucki is retiring at the end of this term. He indicated that three people have expressed an interest in running for his job. “Two men and a woman,” he said, “and they meet the Charter requirements. They vote in Glendale.” Job pays about $120,000 and you get to invest about $1/2 billion.

* Encumbered vehicle process could be a fraudulent practice:

Encumbered vehicles: Suntrust Leasing loaned the City $8.5M for the MSB retrofit. The City prepared a list of equipment that would be used as collateral including Beeline buses, fire apparatus and a helicopter. On the list was a fire truck purchased for $280,000 in 1983 and it carried the same value on that list and when it was gifted to Rosarito Beach Mexico in 2007. The City provided the wrong information to Suntrust which, if you or I did, would be called fraud, showing the purchase price rather than the depreciated price. A conversation with Suntrust indicated that if the City didn’t pay up according to the agreement, all Suntrust would do is notify bonding agencies. That would affect the bond rating.

* $93,000,000 capital outlay is fraught with miscoded information…:

$93,000,000 capital outlay numbers are flawed as reported in the 2007 Award Winning Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. The trigger was a $30,000,000 increase over the previous year or 1/3 more. A cursory review shows that funds that should have been charged to enterprise accounts were instead coded to capital outlay. Right Mind Consulting that does database management for the City at $20,000 per month had that amount charged to capital outlay. How many other expenses were charged to the wrong account making individual budget expenditures look good? The public records requests will certainly burgeon as we review certain invoices to determine the accuracy of the coding. The changes must be made before the books are closed this year.