Auditor recommends seven changes for city’s finances
Two items carried over from previous year's audit
City Auditor David Kaplan has completed his audit of municipal finances for 2012 and presented his findings and recommendations to the city council at last week’s council meeting.
The city is required to have its finances audited annually. Kaplan’s audit listed seven recommendations for the city to address.
City Manager Terence Reidy [above] and Chief Municipal Finance Officer [CMFO] Richard Gartz will draft a corrective action plan in response to the concerns of the audit.
One recommendation examined the city’s current payroll time keeping system for the public works department.
“In many instances time cards are not being punched and were not signed by a supervisor for approval,” Kaplan said in the audit. “Also the method in which the time is being transmitted to the payroll department is inefficient.”
Kaplan’s audit suggests the payroll system be updated to a hand-scan or swipe card system.
The following is a list of Kaplan’s recommendations, verbatim:
2012-1 That expenditures be curtailed to available budgetary resources.
2012-2 That the City’s payroll time keeping system process be updated to a computerized time keeping system that utilizes a hand scanning system or swipe cards at various locations.
2012-3 That employees qualified for overtime rates of compensation be paid overtime rates.
2012-4 That the City maintain accurate fixed asset inventory records.
2012-5 That the City’s Ordinance regulating parking meters be revised.
2012-6 That the city expedite its hiring of collection agents to assist in collecting delinquent municipal court time payments outstanding.
2012-7 That the municipal court remit collections by the fifteenth of the month after collection.
Recommendations one and four were carried over from last year.
The first recommendation about expenditures should be corrected this year by the current CMFO, according to Reidy.
“He’s the real deal,” Reidy said of Gartz.
Recommendation four was carried over due to an illness suffered by Acting CMFO Christine Paulin, Reidy said.
“She was in the process of putting together requests for proposal and became ill,” said Reidy.
Gartz is now in charge of the addressing that recommendation concerning the maintenance of fixed asset inventory records.
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