Report 2011-131 Recommendations

To increase accountability and transparency in its governance, the city should ensure that specific reforms are appropriately implemented. Specifically, it should develop an implementation plan containing sufficient detail to establish the activities and coordination required to successfully implement an alternative new employment system so that its nonunion employees are no longer at-will employees of the city council.

To increase accountability and transparency in its governance, the city should determine whether it will continue to own housing and communicate its decision to the public as soon as appropriate. Should the city decide to retain ownership of the housing, it should continue the effort to develop policies and procedures that are necessary to ensure fairness and impartiality in its management of city-owned housing.

To increase accountability and transparency in its governance, the city should continue the effort to develop a comprehensive plan to construct additional housing in the city.

To increase accountability and transparency in its governance, the city should develop a formal policy that describes the circumstances under which revenues can be transferred from its power department, and the limits and permissible uses of transferred revenue.

To ensure that it develops complete and appropriate personnel policies and procedures, the city should continue its efforts to hire an experienced human resources director.

To ensure that it develops complete and appropriate personnel policies and procedures, the new human resources director should ensure that the city's policies and procedures include, at a minimum, requirements for performing and documenting the analyses and justifications for appointments, including promotions, to management positions.

To ensure that it develops complete and appropriate personnel policies and procedures, the new human resources director should ensure that the city's policies and procedures include, at a minimum, requirements for minimum qualifications, desirable qualifications, and job duties for all city executive positions.

To ensure that it develops complete and appropriate personnel policies and procedures, the new human resources director should ensure that the city's policies and procedures include, at a minimum, a periodic appraisal process for executives.

To ensure that it develops complete and appropriate personnel policies and procedures, the new human resources director should ensure that the city's policies and procedures include, at a minimum, an improved methodology for and analysis of future salary surveys, ensuring that they are performed by staff or a consultant with experience and expertise in the area of salary surveys.

The city should determine whether employees have a vested right to longevity payments and whether it can legally reduce or discontinue the original longevity program as a means to reduce its costs.

To ensure accurate reporting and payment of retirement benefits, the city should work with California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) to resolve the reported findings and observation noted in CalPERS April 2012 audit report within a reasonable period of time.

To better control contract expenditures and ensure that it receives the best value for the services it purchases, the city should require that all city contracts be entered into its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system so that the contract managers and the city can more efficiently and effectively track the city's contract expenditures.

To better control contract expenditures and ensure that it receives the best value for the services it purchases, the city should also begin using the ERP system's uniquely assigned contract numbers for tracking and generating a list of contracts.

To better control contract expenditures and ensure that it receives the best value for the services it purchases, the city should require all contracts to have expenditure limits and starting and ending dates for services performed.

To better control contract expenditures and ensure that it receives the best value for the services it purchases, the city should require contract managers to use logs to monitor payments and the contractor's progress toward completion of required deliverables.

To better control contract expenditures and ensure that it receives the best value for the services it purchases, the city should require that all contracts contain a well-defined scope of work and deliverables that a sufficiently detailed invoice can be measured against.

To better control contract expenditures and ensure that it receives the best value for the services it purchases, the city should ensure that contracts include language requiring contractors to provide invoices with sufficient detail so that contract managers can determine whether the services provided are consistent with the scope of work.

To better control contract expenditures and ensure that it receives the best value for the services it purchases, the city should also require the finance department to review invoices to identify those that lack sufficient detail and return such invoices to the appropriate contract manager to obtain a revised invoice that is sufficiently detailed.

To better control contract expenditures and ensure that it receives the best value for the services it purchases, the city should continue its efforts to develop and implement policies and procedures for a competitive bidding process, including clearly defining the circumstances under which forgoing competitive bidding is appropriate.

To the extent that the city implements policies that affect contracts, the city should also ensure that it reviews all current contracts and amends them, if necessary, to comply with newly established policies.

To improve its internal controls, better control costs, and prevent abuse from occurring, the city should require the finance department to review credit card expenditures for appropriateness.

To improve its internal controls, better control costs, and prevent abuse from occurring, the city should revise its travel and expense reimbursement policy to be clear about the expenditure limits for meals, and add a limit for lodging accommodations.

To comply with the Political Reform Act (reform act), the city should ensure that the city administrator and city clerk are appropriately trained to administer its conflict-of-interest code (conflict code).

To comply with the reform act, the city should continue to ensure that all city executives file statements of economic interests, as its conflict code requires.

To comply with the reform act, with regard to consultants, the city should review its existing contracts and have the city administrator determine which consultants should file statements of economic interests. The city should retain documentation of the city administrator's determinations and also forward them to the city council for review.

To comply with the reform act, the city should ensure that any consultants identified by the city administrator as needing to file statements of economic interests submit the forms as soon as possible.

To address the structural deficit in its general fund, the city should seek long-term solutions to balance the general fund's expenditures and revenues and lessen its reliance on transfers from other city funds. These solutions could include revenue increases, such as the proposed increased and new parcel tax, as well as looking for ways to reduce expenditures.

The city should clearly present the general fund structural deficit to the city council and the public in a budget that includes narrative and summary information to help users understand the city's budget process and its priorities and challenges, and that incorporates the elements for improved budgeting practices recommended by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA).

To better guide its budget preparation and improve transparency, the city should develop budget policies, particularly for long-term planning, that incorporate the elements that the GFOA recommends and make these policies available to the public on its Web site.

The city should ensure that its budgets include the information required in the city code.

The city should improve the monitoring of expenditures against the approved budget by establishing a centralized process to regularly monitor and report to the city administrator and the city council on the status of the budget.

To ensure that it issues debt when doing so is in the best interests of the city and is consistent with its long-term financial goals, the city should establish a comprehensive debt policy that includes the elements that the GFOA recommends and make the debt policy it establishes available on its Web site.

To ensure that the city council and public are well informed regarding proposed debt decisions, the city should provide summary information that clearly explains the costs, risks, and benefits related to the proposed decisions in its agenda packets, and should provide these in advance on its Web site.

To ensure that it can demonstrate sufficient analysis and provide justification for its decisions on significant energy-related transactions, the city should develop an integrated energy strategy that examines all elements of its energy needs, sources, and objectives.

To ensure that it can demonstrate sufficient analysis and provide justification for its decisions on significant energy-related transactions, the city should create a formal process and guidelines that include the following: identifying the benefits and risks of proposed transactions, quantifying the benefits and risks of proposed transactions, evaluating and comparing proposed transactions against alternative proposals, quantifying the impact of proposed transactions on short-term and long-term rates paid by the city's energy customers, seeking an independent validation of the fair market value of proposed transactions, and documenting and communicating the findings of the evaluation process to the city council.

If the city plans to continue to rely on the advice of its consultants when entering significant energy-related transactions, it should develop a process for the consultants to provide written documentation that would enable the city to satisfy the process and guidelines outlined in the previous two recommendations.

To minimize the continuing financial losses on the two currently outstanding interest rate swaps, the city should develop a clear process for deciding how it will terminate these swaps based on the cost and future risk to the city.

To ensure that any future decisions to enter into interest rate swaps are carefully considered, the city should develop and follow a process that thoroughly analyzes the risks and benefits of the potential swap transaction.

To ensure that any future decisions to enter into interest rate swaps are carefully considered, the city should specifically disallow the use of derivatives for speculative purposes and should require the retention of the documents and analyses that support the decision to enter into the swap.