PHOTO: Courtesy of WLUK
APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The city of Appleton was hit with a hefty penalty for missing a July audit deadline.
“Under ordinary circumstances I would be presenting the executive budget and service plan to you this evening,” Mayor Jake Woodford said at the October 7 Common Council meeting. “Right up front, I just want to say I will not be presenting the budget tonight.”
That misstep costing the city about $310,000 from its transportation aid budget.
The transportation aid money is used to cover a portion of expenses for things like road construction and maintenance.
Mayor Woodford said the city took on a new finance director in the middle of the audit process.
“Our new finance director had to work to pull together the information that was needed, and many of the systems that the city of Appleton has relied on were built on institutional memory of the people who came up through the department and came up through the department for many years,” Woodford explained.
The missed deadline is now affecting the city’s budget planning process.
“I am disappointed and frustrated that we find ourselves in this position and it is not a situation that we are going to repeat,” he said. “Earlier in the fall we brought forward a recommendation that was supported by the common council to bring on some outside consulting to review our processes and procedures and to build standard operating procedures for us.”
Woodford said the $310,000 was avoidable. But it was a one-time error, and the city has money to compensate for such an instance.
“Either absorbing that $310,000 with resources available at the end of the fiscal year, so any unspent funds, or alternatively to draw on the city’s reserve funds,” he told us.
The city is still working to complete the audit, something Woodford says would happen soon. Work is still being done on the budget, but Woodford doesn’t expect significant impacts on the budget timeline.
Woodford added there was a delay in addressing the penalty at common council. He said it was because of a focus on completing the audit and the financial impact of missing the deadline as budget season begins.
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