Auditor recommendation: We recommend that the City establish policies and procedures for requesting reimbursement of grant expenditures on a monthly basis, including reconciliation of the expenditures and reimbursements under each grant.
Views of Responsible Officials and Planned Correcve Acon: The City agrees with this finding. Vacancies in key posions including the Airport Manager and the Transit Director of Administraon meant that there was not sufficient experse in the program areas to ensure that reimbursement requests were prepared and submied mely. These key posions have now been filled. The City now has an Airport Manager with substanal experience managing municipal airports and overseeing federal funding for airports. The City also hired a Transit Director of Administraon with extensive federal and state grant management experience, and experse in Transit programs. The Accounng Officer, Grants Manager and Accounng Financial Analyst posions in the Finance Department have been filled, and the Grants Division is now fully staffed. More robust staffing is allowing Finance to perform more oversight in addion to working more closely with Transit and Airport program staff. Filling these key posions and retaining qualified staff is essenal to establishing a process for mely requests for reimbursement, and reconciliaon of expenditures and reimbursement under each grant.
The Transit Division is working with a contractor provided by the FTA on establishing policies and procedures to ensure compliance with federal grant requirements. This contractor is also providing training and technical assistance to the Transit program. The scope of this work includes ensuring requests for reimbursement of grant expenditures are submied mely, and reconciliaons of grant expenditures and reimbursements are completed mely and accurately.
The Airport Department is in the process of contracng with a vendor to assist with federal compliance and provide training for Airport staff on relevant Uniform Guidance requirements. The vendor’s scope of work will include helping with developing and documenng policies and standard operang procedures for requests for reimbursement, and reconciliaon of expenditures and reimbursements. Addionally, the Airport Department plans to create a Grant Accountant posion which will be responsible for reconciling grant expenditures monthly and processing reimbursement requests quarterly.
In CY25 the City plans to provide Uniform Guidance training for staff which will include internal controls related to cash management.
Responsible Official:Emily Oster, Finance Director, James Harris, Airport Manager, Airport Heavy Equipment Mechanic, Gabrielle Chavez, Transit Director of Administration, Matthew Bonifer, Accounting Officer, Erika Lujan, Grants Manager
Timeline and Esmated Compleon Date: June 30, 2025