The Florence City Council has voted to forego a forensic audit for several city-based financial accounts.
The audit would have included any interest free personal loans/advances provided by the City of Florence to city employees and any sale of used automobiles facilitated by the City of Florence.
The proposal made by Weaver, a Texas accounting firm, was just over $100,000 to conduct the audit. Councilman Rudl Mergelman is quoted in the Canon City Record as saying, “The cost could be much higher with the anguish the staff would be forced to endure as they spend hours exhuming the past and reliving this disgusting period of time. We do not have the multi-person departments that can share the workload that this would require. This process has only been supported by a very few people. I have not talked to anyone else in the past year that supports this effort, in fact, most consider it a wasted effort as I do.”
Councilman Steve Wolfe said that the personal loans had been paid back, either by city employees or by the interim City Manager, Tom Piltingsrud, and that the likelihood of recovering potentially missing funds would be low.
