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Campbell mayor seeks release from emergency
By jeanne starmack
campbell
The mayor says he’ll ask for release from fiscal emergency before the end of this year even though there is still work to do toward satisfying the state.
“I’m going to ask, and hope they take into consideration that we’re making progress and making an honest effort,” Mayor Bill VanSuch said Monday.
Under fiscal emergency, the state oversees the city’s finances.
Campbell has been able to project a positive cash balance for the next five years, which is one requirement for getting out of fiscal emergency, a status it’s had with the state since 2004.
But there still are some deficiencies noted in a 2007 state auditor’s report on accounting methods that need to be addressed, Sherman Miles, the city’s finance director, said Monday.
Miles said the city is making good progress but there still are some tasks he is completing, he said.
Miles said the state wants to see written procedures for how the city ends its cash transactions at the end of the month, and he is going over that with staff.
He said the city still needs off-site storage and a disaster-recovery plan for computer files, and he is working on that.
He said the police department has to give receipts for money for its Law Enforcement Trust Fund, which is used to buy equipment for the police department.
He said the issue of who sets water rates must be settled and could be settled by a charter amendment. Right now, the mayor sets them, but under Ohio law, the city administrator should, he said.
An inventory of city assets is almost completed, he said.
But reconciling the city’s books to bank statements is still behind. Miles said he is still trying to reconcile books for April 2010.
The last meeting this year of a commission that oversees the city’s finances for the state is Dec. 19. Sharon Hanrahan, chairwoman of the commission for the state, has said she does not believe the city will be able to ask for release by the end of the year because there was still too much to be done. She could not be reached to comment Monday.