Kimberley City Council is going ahead with an invitation to the BC Muncipal Auditor General — Basia Ruta — after a unanimous vote at Monday's regular meeting.
About one month ago, Councillor Don McCormick put forward the motion that the Auditor General's services be requested, specifically around theMark Creek redevelopment project — the Flume project, as it's known.
The decision motion was deferred until a later date. "We actually deferred the decision and threw it over to staff to do some further investigation with respect to potential costs, and whether it would actually fit in with the Municipal Auditor General's mandate," Mayor Ron McRae said.
The staff report came back to Council on Monday night, June 23. McRae said Council discussed the subject based on two aspects of the report.
"The report indicated there was a potential cost associated with having the Auditor General come," McRae said. He added that city staff had done some research with respect to a couple of communities — Rossland and Cranbrook — who did have the Municipal Auditor General come in, "but they weren't able to reveal and/or nail down the exact cost, other than to suggest they were potentially substantial."
McRae said the other part of the staff report was the Municipal Auditor General does audits based on "themes," not specific projects. The themes are listed as audit topics.
McRae said the Auditor General provides a list of themes, or audit topics, and the interested municipality chooses a theme that best fits what the municipality would like to have the AG take a look at.
"It wouldn't make a lot of sense to make a request to the Municipal Auditor General with something like a specific project, and that it would make more sense if in fact we were going to engage the services of the auditor general that we would fit it in with one of the topics, and/or themes they do their audits around."
McRae said on Monday night Council defeated the original motion that had been deferred — to invite the Auditor General around the specific flume project — and that a letter of inquiry be sent with respect to the City of Kimberley participating with the Municipal Auditor General around Audit Topic No. 3 — "Learnings from Local Government Capital Procurement Projects and Asset Management Programs."
McRae said that if Municipal Auditor General Ruta were to accept the invitation to come to Kimberley and take a look at that particular topic, "it's probably a couple of years out."