All taxpayers of St. Albert should be deeply concerned that Councillor Natalie Joly is proposing that the audit committee is to be disbanded even before it gets a chance to start. It is my understanding from the published meeting schedule that only two very short meetings have been held so far on March 20 and May 2 with no minutes issued for public review.
The original bylaw 25/2016 clearly states that the role is "to provide an independent review of and guidance with respect to programs with a focus on efficiency, effectiveness, economy, policy compliance and risk control." The key to any good audit is that it is unbiased and independent. Coun. Joly seems to agree that an audit is a good thing, wants to keep the $300,000 budget but allocate it back to city administration, and wants it to focus on areas already identified by city staff and wants to leave it up to the city manager to complete. This is the exact opposite of an independent audit and regrettably is more like having the fox guard the hen-house.
My business background provides me some knowledge to provide these comments. Over 25 years I have managed multi-million dollar projects that have undergone numerous financial and process audits conducted by both internal and external auditors. I have also been part of audit committees performing audits and I volunteered (but was not selected) to be one of the two citizens on the audit committee.
My recommendation is that the audit committee should continue to move forward starting with a general mandate as set out in the bylaw, issue a general scope RFP and hire an external independent auditor. The auditor's first order of business should be to do an overall assessment to define “low hanging fruit," i.e. areas where the biggest opportunities for operational or financial improvement exist, then report to council and refine the scope to focus on these areas.
City administration should view this as an independent unbiased opportunity to help them improve operational or financial effectiveness that ultimately provides better services to the taxpayers of St. Albert. If Coun. Joly cannot support this then maybe she should step down from the committee and assign her position to another councillor that could work with Coun. Sheena Hughes to move it forward.
Mike Killick, St. Albert
