The auditor’s accounting of the city’s “reoccurring issues” at last night’s council meeting reminded me of the theory that the world is run by C students. In our case, it appears to be the C minus ones.
The auditor used terms like “area of concern,” “late and inconsistent” and “significant non compliance.” The city lost revenue and paid penalties in a variety of ways. Contracts lacked signatures, past due utility bills were plentiful and timecards were not approved properly.
The city didn’t have wind insurance for 24 days. During hurricane season. Worker’s comp lapsed for nonpayment.
You get the idea. Not the finest moment for the coolest town. (But there was enough interest in the presentation to attract two former mayors and two former councilmen to the meeting.)
Sadly, such deficiencies and discrepancies have been batted about between the mayor, the council and a gaggle of gadflies and others for a long time.
In his remarks, the mayor pledged “a lot of systemic changes” in his working relationship with the council, and said he wants the members to share the “burden” of dealing with the city’s cash flow. He also introduced the newly hired comptroller. To state the obvious, this new guy has his work cut out for him. To paraphrase one speaker, we don’t know what they’re paying him but it isn’t enough.
So now what?
The full audit won’t be available to the public until the city administration responds to the findings and submits an action plan which the council has to accept. The mayor is waiting on the Department of Justice review. That’s another story.
Let’s hope that everyone involved will buckle down and work hard to bring up their GPA.
Good article Lisa
Oooooo…YIKES! Alarming report!
Very accurate Lisa…. As one past Councilman said last night: “asking for help and accepting help is two different things”.
Lisa,
As the property insurance agent for the City of Bay St. Louis I was unable to attend the meeting but sent the information in regards to the City of Bay St. Louis Wind Insurance.
The City never had a lapse of wind coverage. They had a 24 day lapse in the wind deductible buy down policy due to finances. The way it works is that we secure a wind policy with a very high deductible at an extremely low rate, then we were able to use the MS Windstorm Underwriting Association to get our deductible down to $20,000 based upon a $1m blanket coverage at rates that extremely for this type of coverage. Actually, the MWUA knew the rates for the Blanket coverage were way to low and discontinued that option in late 2014. In reality this action saved the city in excess of $2,000 As an agent to all our clients we advise all our clients to bind coverage and not to self insure.
Lisa, Love your Notebook. I especially like your updates on P&Z matters. What were the Council’s decisions on variance requests before them at their last meeting? Did I miss this….
Thanks,
DeniseB
Your accounting of the meeting was enjoyable. Thanks for keeping me informed without having to sit thru a boring meeting, although this one may not have been boring. Keep em coming.