Members of council say the results of the KPMG audit were deeply concerning.
Mayor Melissa Blake says based on how other businesses run, she couldn’t have imagined the city was so behind on policy.
“They (policies) exist for the reasons that give you exact certainty in every circumstance that you’ll be facing. And so in this organization, I never anticipated that we wouldn’t have the kinds of policies that we’ve needed,” she said.
Blake also brought up how during the election, she told people that outside consultants weren’t getting reimbursed for travel
“Somehow I either received misinformation or didn’t get it accurately at all. And whatever the cause is, from the council perspective it’s an unacceptable practice for our organization to be supporting that,” she said.
She says at some point during the city’s rapid growth, it got ahead of itself.
“The pace of development that we’ve been undertaking may have been part of the contributing factor to how some policies were just never created, how some practices came into effect without compliance with what policies did exist,” she said.
Councillor and Chair of the Audit and Budget Committee Sheldon Germain says the audit has lead to some personnel decisions.
“The conduct of the past was unacceptable, and will not be tolerated. Some of the documentation in the audit report points to past employees’ consultants that did not follow policy, and they are no longer with the organization,” he said.
He also says the procedural gaps are almost overwhelming.
“The (word) “lack” is used lots – there’s 46 findings where there’s deficiencies. It might’ve been cheaper for us to do a report on what policies we have in place than what we don’t have in place,” he said.
Of the 46 recommendations made, Germain says council will directly deal at making changes to six related to governance structure.
“The whole governance section, mayor and council are going to of course take the lead on that. It is probably our biggest, most crucial area. Because that is where we as a council perform our function,” he said.
Council will see administration’s plans to deal with the other 40 recommendations next month.
