The Milaca City Council discussed several topics June 16, including a clean audit, new accounting software and improvements to Recreation Park.
A clean audit
Milaca received the results of its 2020 audit, which looked good. Ryan Schmidt presented the audit, which resulted in a clean, unmodified opinion.
The audit process went smoothly; no strange accounting policies or actions were noticed by auditors, according to Schmidt. He did note the audit found the city was lacking in segregation of duties. But that is pretty common among smaller cities that don’t employ a large number of staff members, according to Schmidt.
The auditor noted that both revenues and expenditures exceeded budgeted amounts. He found biggest categories where that happened were in intergovernmental revenue, due to governmental aid during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a decrease in fees collected below what was budgeted.
The audit was accepted unanimously.
New accounting software
The council approved staff purchasing new auditing software. City staff currently use Banyon Fund Accounting, which was implemented over 20 years ago.
A presentation laid out the issues the city has with Banyon. Staff have encountered problems with data integrity due to execution errors, upgrade issues and other problems. The problems have led to inconsistencies with accounting reports. When staff has reached out to Banyon, the company’s support team doesn’t return calls or lacks knowledge of how to solve certain problems, according to the presentation.
City Manager Tammy Pfaff said they’ve experienced more errors than ever before, including once when the software inappropriately referenced the 2019 budget and Banyon couldn’t explain why it happened and staff had to fix it themselves.
The software also isn’t integrated with other applications, like Excel or Adobe, resulting in redundant manual data entries. The software also lacks individual logins, which is important for tracking changes and auditing, according to the presentation.
Staff recommended Civic Systems Connect software. The total cost to purchase the software is $59,070 plus an annual licensing fee of $8,864.
The switch will take about three months to reach full implementation, but could take longer.
The council accepted almost $34,000 in donations to go to the Veterans Memorial Project. The money came from 37 different donors in amounts ranging from $50 to $10,000.
Rec Park improvements
The council approved a few improvements to go into Recreation Park. The first was a warming house. The initial structure is an empty shell on skids and is expected to arrive in eight weeks.
City staff will finish the flooring, walls and insulation once it is delivered. $150,000 was set aside for the warming house, but the structure itself cost almost $23,000. The finishing touches will probably bring that up to just over $30,000, according to the presentation.
The city also approved ordering two concrete “cornhole” boards, which will replace one set of horse shoe pits. In total the boards cost $2,268. Staff said they were still considering what to do about keeping bags at the park, but in the meantime users should be able to bring their own.
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