Audits and pay days

The Saratoga Town Council is preparing to move forward with an audit of Fiscal Year 2019/2020 after making the decision to contract with a retired University of Wyoming professor.

During their February 2 meeting, the governing body also discussed moving the pay period date for Town of Saratoga employees.

Audit Preparation

As the Saratoga Town Council moves ever closer to the end of the current fiscal year, it does so without an audit of the previous fiscal year. While an audit was conducted by Carver Florek and James (CFJ) of Fiscal Year 2018/2019, meetings at the end of 2020 appeared to indicate that the newly contracted firm wasn’t fully committed to working with the Town of Saratoga.

Indeed, during the December 15, 2020 meeting of the governing body, emails provided by then mayor pro-tem Bob Keel read that Jason Lund, a partner at CFJ, indicated that his firm was hesitant at engaging with Saratoga Town Council until they had appointed a mayor and a town clerk (see “Saratoga at impasse on upcoming audit” on page 3 of the December 23, 2020 Saratoga Sun).

Since then, the mayoral vacancy has been filled by Creed James and the governing body appears to be moving forward on advertising for the open clerk position. James informed the rest of the council on February 2 that he had reached out to the Wyoming Department of Audit to inform them of where the municipality was currently at in their progress and had talked with Lund about audit preparation.

According to James, Lund had stated that the Town of Saratoga would need to hire or contract with someone who met CFJs professional standards and was a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). James Childress, a CPA engaged by the Town of Saratoga in 2019 and 2020, had helped the municipality prepare their audit of Fiscal Year 2018/2019. Since the change in council, it would appear that the Town of Saratoga has unceremoniously severed that relationship.

“He (Lund) didn’t guarantee that they would continue going forward with the Town of Saratoga or not but I think, regardless of what firm we find to do the audit, we’re going to have to have someone with that skills, knowledge and experience to put together that audit package,” said James.

James added that the Town of Saratoga had been contacted by Christina Pope, who had previously served as treasurer for the Town of Mills. Pope had replaced Lisa Whetstone, who had been charged with embezzling more than $60,000 in 2017. According to James, Pope’s proposal to the Town of Saratoga was to be hired as a full-time employee as opposed to working on a contractual basis.

In addition to Pope, the Town of Saratoga had also been contacted by Stuart Webster, professor emeritus at the University of Wyoming College of Business.

“This individual has tremendous experience in the accounting industry, especially as a forensic accountant. He was a professor at the University of Wyoming for, I believe, 20 plus years. He did reach out to us as well and thought he could help,” said James. “He really gets excited about going through the books and trying to figure out where money went, what went wrong and try to clean up the financials for different companies and municipalities.”

While Pope requested full-time employment with the Town of Saratoga at $20 per hour plus benefits, Webster proposed contract employment at a rate of $75 per hour.

Councilmember Jon Nelson praised Pope’s experience, stating that she would be an asset if she were to apply for the open clerk position, but ultimately recommended the governing body contract with Webster.

The motion to allow James to work with Webster on establishing a contract passed unanimously.

New Payday

The Saratoga Town Council recently began considering moving the pay period for Town of Saratoga employees following the departure of former clerk Suzie Cox. The catalyst for the change was revealed during the January 15 meeting of the governing body, when James stated that employees would receive their paychecks a day late due to the Equality Day holiday on January 14.

At that meeting, it was discussed that processing payroll on a Monday for a Tuesday payday put undue pressure on the accounting staff at town hall. That pressure had increased with the retirement of Cox. With another holiday, Presidents’ Day, coming up, the council discussed moving the pay period to later in the week with Thursday being a proposed day.

“Have we reached out to the employees to see how they feel about this?” asked Councilmember Bob Keel.

While it did not appear that the council had talked with town employees about moving the payday from Tuesday to Thursday, Councilmember D’Ron Campbell and Councilmember Jon Nelson both stated the move would make processing payroll easier.

“I understand that pushing it may be a hardship that will be faced for one period but then we’ll be back on a consistent cycle and it won’t need to be adjusted and it will be consistent regardless if there’s a holiday or not,” said Nelson.

As discussion continued, Campbell stated that another issue when processing payroll has been that the module in Caselle, the Town of Saratoga’s accounting software, had not been correctly set-up. This had been, apparently, discovered by Pam Paulson, former Town of Hanna treasurer, who had been contracted by the Town of Saratoga.

“There were some discrepancies and it was not working the way it intended, so we still need some time to make everything correct so that people aren’t coming in saying ‘My paychecks wrong’ because the computer program was not programmed properly,” Campbell said. “So we’re working on it right now.”

A motion to move the next pay day to February 17 and then to the Thursday following the end of the pay period passed unanimously.

The next meeting of the Saratoga Town Council will be at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, February 17 at Saratoga Town Hall.