Agenda notice (2009.10.13)
Posted by Steven Hurdle on October 9, 2009
There are two agendas up for this Tuesday, Administration and Finance at 4:45 PM and Planning, Zoning, and Affordable Housing at 7 PM. The agendas are available at the City of Langford website (where they are generally available only until the day of the meeting), and have also been uploaded to Inside Langford’s “FILES” section on the left sidebar (where they are maintained as a permanent archive).
Notice something interesting in the agendas? Let others know your thoughts in the comments.
Heather Scott said
The most interesting thing to me was this:
Sam Snipes said
Other than Government remittances, there are likely very few cheques over $2,000 that are urgent. Common practice is to allow remittance cheques (ie GST, PST, source deductions, etc) to be signed by City staff but to still have controls on other cheques.
In my opinion a staff limit of $50,000 is too high.
Jamie said
Sam you should be he sheriff and Heather,you could be his deputy.
You people break me up.
I don`t know why I waste my time looking at this stuff,but it does make me laugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sam Snipes said
Jamie,
Glad that my comments make someone’s day a little brighter :-)
Cheryl McLachlan said
At the Tues. Oct. 13th Admin. & Finance Committee meeting there was a short discussion among the public members of the committee (Councillor Winnie Sifert was the only councillor present and was chairing the meeting) where the committee members felt that an increase from the current $2000 to $50,000 was too big an increase, the committee bantered around $20,000 to $30,000 settling on a recommendation of:
“That Council increase the limit requiring signature of an elected official on a cheque to $25,000 and review this issue in a year to determine if the amount should be increased further.”
Cheryl McLachlan said
I attended the Admin. & Finance Committee meeting of Oct. 13th and the 3 citizen members were against a limit of $50,000 before requiring an elected official’s signature on the cheque, and made the recommendation:
“That Council increase the limit requiring signature of an elected official on a cheque to $25,000 and review this issue in a year to determine if the amount should be increased further.”
At the last Council meeting of Oct. 19th I was surprised to hear Councillor Matt Sahlstrom, chair of the Admin. & Finance Committee, but who was not in attendance at the last Admin. & Finance Committee meeting, put forward the motion to increase the limit requiring signature of an elected official on a cheque to $50,000. This was passed unanimously by all the councillors. Mayor Young was absent from the council meeting, which was chaired by Deputy Mayor Lanny Seaton. Councillor Denise Blackwell commented that, “they were going with the original recommendation from staff.”
Sam Snipes said
It is really suprising that council would go out and seek opinion but then do things the way they wanted to in the first place anyways?!
I wonder if they bothered to ask the auditors how they felt about this change? The issue here is not about trust it is about oversight. Having two signatures on a cheque is great, but if one signatory reports to the other then that is a problem for large transactions.
If your boss were to approach you and ask you to sign a cheque claiming that they have personally verified the expense and invoice then what are you going to do?
The Mayor was recently quoted as saying that he spends 90% of his time on council business. Surely he can spend part of that time signing cheques.