Amador County – Ione City Council on Tuesday (Aug. 7) will consider a recommendation by its newly hired City Manager Edwin Pattison to form an ad hoc committee to respond to the 2011-2012 Grand Jury Report.
Pattison in an Aug. 2 report recommended creating a committee to include two Council members, himself and the city attorney, saying it would have no financial impact other than staff time to prepare the response. He recommended the committee write a draft response to be “presented to the full City Council with time to prepare and submit a final response,” by the statutory deadline of Sept. 19.
The Grand Jury is still investigating Ione. The ’11-’12 report included an independent financial analysis that looked at thousands of pages of documents, including the City Auditors’ reports for fiscal years ending in 2006-2010. The Report found Ione spent $2.29 million on a total of five different wastewater consultant engineers between those years, and paid a legal firm $1.18 million between June 2007 and August 2011.
Among findings, the Grand Jury said the City Manager at the time “did not demonstrate that she possessed the proper qualifications and expertise to perform the duties required for that position.” It also found that the General Plan created by the City Manager and (Pacific Municipal Consulting) was unrealisticly based on the financial infrastructure in place at the time.” The report also said “on many occasions the City Manager provided insufficient or misleading information making it difficult or impossible for the City Council to cast intelligent votes.” This was based on independent analysis of the city’s Local Agency Investment Fund, about which complaints said it may have been improperly using restricted Community Facility District funds. The study showed that was not the case.
The independent Grand Jury finance consultant, Conrad Davis (of Crowe Horwath LLP) in a report said “it is our understanding the city is in the process of reconciling the deposits and receivables related to the (CFD) to underlying supporting documentation. When issued, the audited financial statements and financial statements of findings for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011 may confirm whether this issue remains a significant deficiency.”
The Report found that the City Manager and City Council disregarded findings and recommendations of the 2010-2011 Grand Jury report” and “ignored complaints voiced by local citizens at City Council meetings concerning financial matters and problems surrounding the proposed wastewater treatment plant.” It also found that “the money spent on consultants for the wastewater plant was unnecessary because it was based on an unrealistic General Plan.”
Story by Jim Reece
