During the morning workshop meeting on Tuesday, September 10th, 2024 at 9 am, the Palm Coast City Council heard a presentation from a third-party firm on forensic audits. The presentation started with explanations of a forensic audit and other services that may be a better fit, such as an organization-wide risk assessment to determine whether a more in-depth investigation of specific departments is warranted.
During the presentation, it was explained that a forensic audit is typically done with litigation in mind, and typically forensic audits are done when there is a specific scope of potential fraud in a specific department. Risk analysis is another service that covers an organization with a broader brush, to determine if some departments or areas may require further investigation. Pontieri initiated the discussion on whether a full forensic audit was required, without having a specific scope; in her commentary, she had gone on to explain that while she agreed with assessing risk and possibly evaluating efficiencies within the departments, she wasn’t sold on the need for a forensic audit and the price it would come with. It was stated during the presentation that a forensic audit could run in the area of $500,000, possibly more depending on how many departments the council would want to be audited; whereas an organizational risk assessment would run roughly $45,000, and would determine if further examination of departments was necessary.
Ultimately, the council decided to wait on issuing any RFPs for the risk analysis until the presenting firm could send the council examples of a risk analysis on a government agency, to determine if the deliverables would be worth the price.
The search for a new city manager was also discussed during the workshop meeting. SGR, an executive recruitment firm, provided a presentation on the progress of the search for a new city manager for the City of Palm Coast. Palm Coast piggybacked on the contract that was put out by the City of New Smyrna Beach, who recently just retained their new city manager. The presentation outlined the steps of the process, from the initial launch of the job opening to the marketing, and the process by which the council will start thinning out the candidates. Candidates will also be thoroughly checked by SGR, delving deeper as the council gets closer and closer to choosing the new city manager. This is about a 3-month process, so once the job listing has been given the green light, there will be a lengthy period for candidates to apply as well as multiple interviews and checks.
“SGR stands behind our work, if a candidate is hired and leaves before completing 12 months of work, we will come back and start the process over again for the cost of travel and advertising, so you can see that we stand behind our work,” says Vice President Doug Thomas. Pontieri questioned whether the salary for a City Manager that Palm Coast offers will be comparable to the workload, VP Thomas said on record that to get the best city manager, the salary would range between $190,000-$240,000 a year, which is significantly higher than the current salary. VP Thomas also explained that Palm Coast will want a seasoned city manager due to the development, growth, size of the budget, etc., and those seasoned city managers may not find the Palm Coast salary of $189,000 a year to be comparable. These are all questions and issues that will be coming before the next city council after they take office on November 19th. This agenda item will come back before the city council in the future after the new council has been seated, either November 16th or December 3rd.
