“I’m talking about money that you send over there and she takes in.”

Ingrid Jones has a law enforcement/criminal prosecution and litigation background. City Councilperson Ingrid Jones picked up that the records in Finance and Codes are not reconciled in the same business day. They are not reconciled until the next business day at the earliest. Before last Thursday none of the Coatesville City Council members were aware of that fact.

Ms. Jones, “Ms. Bjorhus, Excuse me, I’m not a mathematician but say he gives you a day’s work. Twenty five, whatever it is applications, how long do you think it would take you to add those figures yourself?” 

Ms. Bjorhus, “Ten minutes.”

Ms. Jones, “Ten minutes, OK and do you think in that time you could come up with the same figures he does? The same figures that you turned over there.”

Ms. Bjorhus, “The dollars.”

Ms. Jones, “Everybody stop, so maybe he should have a cutoff time, have his work done. Have a cutoff time by say 4 o’clock. You get the figures over there. You could have them done before the day is over.

Ms. Bjorhus, “Right, but I think where the problem is also coming in is, when the day is over, work is being entered into the system without the money being paid. But they’re starting the work on the permits.”

Mr. Molina, “We have to begin the process…There’s a fee assigned to the permit. OK, but they’re not issued until they’re paid. Now there may be a variance of ones that…have been tabulated because there’s still additional information coming in. But that variance isn’t a large variance.”

Ms. Jones, “I’m talking about money that you send over there and she takes in.”

Ms. Bjorhus, “The money, I don’t believe is an issue.” Yes, the moneys…

Ms. Jones, “O, it’s an issue.”

Ms. Bjorhus, “The money that comes over and goes into the GL, we’re doing everything at this point in time to confirm that the money is going into the GL. But I think that why, as I first understand it, that as Mr. Molina just said they start processing. They start working on the permit without taking in money. Those dollar figures are in the MyGov system.

Ms. Jones, “Well how many people’s hands would that money pass through? The money that he gets, when it comes to your office does it just pass through your hands or several hands?

Ms. Bjorhus, “It would go through whoever was the cashier there’s two cash stations.

Ms. Jones, “OK”

Ms. Bjorhus, “And then whoever batches out and then whoever confirms the batch out against the GL, so three people.”

Mr. Simpson, “I guess my point is that if you’re not reconciling and it’s matching every day there’s obviously an opportunity for that money to just disappear. And with what you’ve provided, the information that you’ve provided to the press last week, that would be one of the first places that I would look. And I’d try to get it settled and get to where… You went to the press and said there’s $160,000 that you think is missing somewhere.”

Ms. Bjorhus, “Well that was in the audit.”

Mr. Simpson, “But, so if the audit says there’s $160,000 and we don’t know where it’s at. And now you have an opportunity where these two aren’t matching. I would start there and say, well let’s get this fixed first. Because the longer we go the more opportunity there is for someone to abuse the system…I don’t know, maybe I’m making it too simplified.”

Mr. Hamrick, “You’re right Mr. President and we’re at the point, let’s fix the things that can be fixed now.”

 Ms. Bjorhus, “But right now…when we take in money at the window we reconcile to the batch. There’s a way that you go when you enter its three options; check, or credit card or cash. When we batch out we have how many cash, does the cash match? Yes. How many checks? Do the checks match? Yes.  Then we spot check to make sure that all the checks are identified. Credit cards, how many credit cards?

Mr. Simpson, “But is it matching his?

Mr. Hamrick, “It should match..”

Ms. Jones, “Does he sign off on it like, so it shows that you two have the same amount of money?

Ms. Bjorhus, “Mr. Molina should probably be about one quarter of the receipts we took in for the day. And no, we’re not provided with Mr. Molina’s receipts for the day. And additionally, Mr. Molina, if you ran his daily totals from his MyGov system. I think would always have more because no process without payment.”

Mr. Molina, “But that’s, we have to do that. That’s the only way we can begin the process.”

Mr. Simpson, “But at the end of the day you know what the actual cash transfer is.”

Mr. Molina, “We can make that distinction.”

Mr. Simpson, “You can make that adjustment. Let’s say you could have $1,500 in permits pending and out of that $1,500, because you started the process you actually took in cash that was $1000 that day.  You would be able to distinguish between the two. Correct?”

Mr. Molina, “That’s correct.”

Mr. Simpson, “That you have $1,000 in cash and $1,500 pending.  So they’re going to get something for $1,500 so they should know that $500 is pending and $1,000 is cash because…"

Mr. Molina, “But they’re not picking that up.”

Mr. Reed, “They would only get $1,000.”

Mr. Simpson, “Which makes it even easier. Because you’re saying the numbers that you have here are actual cash that you’ve handled.”

Mr. Molina, “That’s right.” 

Mr. Simpson, “You may have another $20,000 in pending stuff that you haven’t even included in these numbers.”

Ms. Jorgenson, “But is that a distinction that you make today?”

Mr. Molina, “No, no that’s the way the system operates. We don’t make that distinction.”

Ms. Jorgenson, “You can take a look at it and say this is work in process and this is actually, this is what’s accrued.”

Mr. Molina, “That’s correct. Basically issued, there would be permits issued and we could generate a value.

Mr. Hamrick, “Yea, you could generate a value of what has been paid. You could tell us what has been paid.

Mr. Molina, “That’s correct.”