Jacob Farmer / jfarmer@yelmonline.com
Kris Ballerini, Roy’s newly-appointed clerk-treasurer, gave a recap of her first 14 days on the job at a city council meeting on Monday, July 14.
On the positive side, Ballerini said that she, the staff and Deputy Clerk Kim Bendel have established “good, open communication” and are on the same page with the work that needs to be done — starting with missing files and poor documentation.
Ballerini described the physical state of the office she inherited as “overwhelming.”
“When you look at that from a financial perspective, those types of oversights and missed opportunities just open you up for, number one, fraudulent activity, but putting you in a financial situation that just isn’t very strong,” Ballerini said. “And I am afraid that we are teetering on that right now.”
The city clerk-treasurer said she’s identified one of the major issues pertaining to the city’s budget.
“The issue comes in that any payment that has been made in the past year, mostly electronically, if it was an electronic payment taken out of our checking account, it was not documented into our accounting software,” Ballerini said. “So what you see when you look in the check register is activity through July of 2024, and then it just stops.”
Now that she’s uncovered that, Ballerini said she and Bendel are in the process of going through the files trying to recreate what has been spent and what has been paid out. They can then compare that to the bank statements, which Ballerini said she’s already started to do.
Ballerini’s plan is to, essentially, recreate the last 12 months of information and enter it into the system.
“At that point, once I am able to enter it in, I should be able to just run a report and let us know where we are,” Ballerini said, adding that her plan is to start with public safety, run a budget report on that item, and then move on to the courts. Public works would be a little more complicated “because their purchases are a little more complicated.”
The entire project would be completed in phases, the clerk-treasurer said. She noted that the city’s past financial practices were convoluted, and “a lot of our things were not completed.”
“Mission critical right now,” Ballerini said. “Bills had to be paid, credit cards were turned off this week. So, when Chief went to get gas, he couldn’t.”
She added that, with the bills paid that day and the ones approved that night, the city should now be caught up. According to Ballerini, the bills hadn’t been paid in the last two months.
“So that was concerning,” Ballerini said. She then clarified her statement.
“I think I am confident; I can say this with 100-percent confidence, the bills had been paid — they just hadn’t been documented properly,” Ballerini said.
Though “money is getting tight,” Ballerini discussed a revenue idea she implemented in a past role that consists of a “daily sweep,” in which a minimum amount of the city’s available balance could be set aside, invested overnight by the bank, and then put back into the account. She also highlighted the need to add protections to tighten the security of the city’s accounts.
Ballerini said she hopes to have a definitive timeline for the entire project by the next council meeting. She added it’s the “deciphering of the accounting codes” that is going to take some time.
