On Saturday, Jan. 13 at 10:15 a.m. at the Cortez Public Library, the Montezuma County League of Women Voters will be hearing from Cortez City Manager Drew Sanders regarding how budgets are prepared by local governments and safeguards used in the city to detect misuse of funds by employees.
According to information provided to The Journal by League of Women Voters’ Judy Schuenemeyer, the attendees will also hear an update on the city’s finances and forensic audits that were completed following the embezzlement of city funds in 2016.
All in the community who are interested are welcome and invited to attend.
“Drew is going to talk about how local budgets get prepared, particularly as it relates to the city of Cortez, how they figure in the income and how they estimate costs,” Schuenemeyer said. “Obviously, people are interested in the financial healthy of the City after an employee embezzled a significant amount of money.”
“We are interested in getting an update on that,” she added. “I think a lot of people are interested in what kind of safeguards the city has and what any government entity should have to make sure this can’t happen again. As taxpayers, we all want to know that our money is being spent wisely and that there aren’t opportunities for people to embezzle money.”
Part of the mission of the League of Women Voters is to help voters be informed on issues going on in their government at any level, and Schuenemeyer said events like this help do just that.
“We certainly hope people will come,” Schuenemeyer said.
In a call with The Journal, Sanders said the event will also be a celebration of audits finally being caught up as of December after the 2016 embezzlement.
“We had to rebuild the financial system, and we had to go back and we went above and beyond to make sure the trial balance is tied together from year to year,” Sanders said. “That is super-important because now we can look the community in the eye and say, ‘We have accounted for your money.’”
“It’s been a very long, arduous journey,” he added.
One of the new implementations that Sanders said he will be speaking on at the event is a “strict system of internal controls.”
“Every system has these, and they need to not only be put in place, but they need to be audited,” he said. “They need to be paid attention to and strictly adhere to. There’s a separation of duty. There’s more than one set of hands that touches our money.”
Sanders added that he will be seeking an external source to audit the new internal control system and provide a report so the community can know for sure that the city has done what they are saying.
Now that the audits are up to date, Sanders said they can now “release impounded funds from our property tax from the state lottery and other sources.”
The city is also enrolled with a program called Clear Gov that allows citizens to log on and view their city’s budget, see where their tax dollars go and more.
Sanders said that ultimately, he hopes that attendees will go away from the event with confidence in the City’s financial system.
“I'm hoping they come away with confidence in our system and competence in their counsel, confidence in management, that we are handling their money properly and we are good stewards of the city government and the resources we have available to us,” he said. “We are doing everything we can to not only take care of it but show you that we're taking care of it and make sure the City can operate properly well into the future. We are now officially out of debt. We owe not one penny to anybody debt wise.”
In March, the League of Women Voters will do an event with county commissioners “to talk about their initiative to have a sales tax on the ballot in November.”
