Audit and Finance Committee (AFC) Meeting Transcript – 8/20/2025 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 8/20/2025 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 8/20/2025 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:30:40 AM] it's 930 on August 20th, 2025, and I will call to order the regular meeting of the audit and finance committee of the Austin city council. We are meeting in city council chambers, which is located in city hall at 301 west second street in Austin, Texas. And we have a quorum of the audit and finance committee here today. I am informed, but I will ask for the record. I am informed that we don't have any public comment this morning. No speakers have signed up. Is that correct? That's correct. Thank you very much. That will take us to item number one. Well, let me tell you what we're gonna do is we're going to go through the agenda items that we present a presentation on and approve the minutes here in a second. And then we're going to go into an executive session. And I'll talk more about that in a minute. But that executive session is the for the purpose of continuing in the process of selecting our next city auditor. I'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to that agenda item. Item number one is approval of the minutes of the special called [9:31:41 AM] minutes of the special called audit and finance committee meetings of July 22nd, July 30th and August 5th, 2025. I'll entertain a motion. Motion is made by council member duchen, seconded by the mayor pro tem discussion. Without objection, the minutes of those three meetings, special called meetings, are approved and that will then take us to item number two, which is our external quality control review for the office of the city auditor. And I will turn it over to our city auditor. >> Excellent. And this will be a very quick presentation. Just wanted to bring to your attention. And there's no actual slides. So don't worry about that because it's very quick I promise. But I just wanted you all to know. So in your backup, you have a copy of our peer review report. And Jason sent it out last week or maybe the week before. But anyway, we had our peer review at the end of July. A peer review is actually, we call it our external quality control review, and it is actually designed to help make sure that we are meeting the standards we are required to follow by city, charter and city code. So we follow something [9:32:42 AM] code. So we follow something called the government auditing standards. They periodically change. We try to stay up with them and make sure we follow them. But as part of the standards, every three years there's an audit of the auditors. So independent auditors from other jurisdictions that basically do the same work we do. In this case, I think Long Beach, Phoenix and county in Pennsylvania, berks county, Pennsylvania, I think, wasn't berks, Lehigh county, Pennsylvania. Thank you, Carl. But they came in. They do a lot of work. They review our policies and procedures. They look at our personnel practices, they look at our training records. They go deep. It's a little bit intimidating and scary. They go through our audit engagements or a sample of audit engagements, and they're really just making sure they're auditing us to make sure that we are complying with those standards. I'm really pleased. And then because we're auditors and their auditors, the nicest thing that they say is that you pass and pass is like the best we got to pass. We had one management letter comment, which just means there's an area that we could tweak and that had to do with including the scope in our audit reports or being more precise about the scope in our audit reports. So we're pretty [9:33:42 AM] audit reports. So we're pretty general in our public reporting of what the scope of our work was, and they wanted us to be more detailed on that. We've already adjusted our internal processes to make sure that happens, but they're kind of reasonable assurance that we comply with standards is like the nicest thing they say. But I'm really proud of. >> Auditors are also sweet. >> We're so nice. >> I know. >> It's a real stretch. They actually said some other nice things about our office and our processes in the letter, which is kind of nice. They give you a few bullets of these are things we think you do well and now you pass like great. So anyway but but just wanted to say I'm I'm proud of the results. I'm proud of the team. We've had you know past opinions for really ever. But but it really shows you know my quality assurance team. Y'all know Carl and Olga also who they really do a lot of work to make sure that everything that goes out of our office is meets the standards and is a high quality product. And in addition to all of the staff that put those things together. So I just wanted to kind of compliment them and let you guys know that we passed. [9:34:44 AM] we passed. >> Thank you very much. Anybody got any questions or comments? We do appreciate it. Thank you very much. That takes care of item number two. She said she's going to be fast. I didn't really know whether to believe that. But she she she she did it. She did it. That's great. Thank you very much. Well that will take us to item number three and members. That's going to take us into executive session. But before we go into executive session, I want to remind the public and other members of the council that aren't on this committee where we are in this process as as you know, Corey indicated and gave us a lot of runway to let us know that she was going to be leaving retiring at the end of the year. And what that did is that created the opportunity for us to have a process where we can have a selection process and maybe have somebody selected before or at or near the time that she leaves. The city code establishes that members of the [9:35:44 AM] establishes that members of the council's audit and finance committee shall serve as a nominating committee to the entire council and the nominating committee. This committee needs to make a recommendation no later than 90 days after the position is vacated. Well, obviously we're well ahead of that schedule because the position is not vacated yet and we shouldn't have any problem with that the only other time may time frame that I'll mention is there's one other time frame that's real important, and that is that the council has to select a city auditor from the recommendations that are made by the nominating committee within 30 days of the recommendation being made. We're all on a schedule for that. And let me talk quickly about the schedule. Today is the 20th, and what we'll be doing today is having the candidates presented to the nominating committee during this audit and finance committee meeting, and hopefully, we'll be in a position where we can get close to knowing who we want to [9:36:46 AM] to knowing who we want to interview. The way I put it in the message board originally is that we would either September 17th or at a special called meeting, have the candidates called meeting of the committee, the nominating slash audit and finance committee. We would have interviews of identified folks. I'm told best practices is to do that through a special called meeting. So that's all your focus. So the recommendation is September 23rd. And the recommendation for September 23rd is that if we do that on September 23rd is that we do that at 1:00 pm members that's a work session day anyway. So. My office and I talked about it. We think since everybody's gonna be here for a work session and we ought to be done by one, that that would be a good time for us to do the interview process. So that's September. My recommendation is that we do that on September 23rd. And [9:37:47 AM] that on September 23rd. And unless there's strong objection, we'll go ahead and set that October 7th. We're currently looking at council, the council receiving our recommendation from the nomination slash audit and finance committee. And top finalists can be interviewed by the city council at that time, October 21st, the council will identify a top candidate, and then we will do what we need to do with pre- employment job checks, finalize a decision, begin the negotiation with regard to that candidate, with the idea being that by November 6th, council names and appoints a new city auditor during that council meeting, and then December 20th 9th or January 12th, because of the way we do that at the city, when people start work and employment, the new city auditor would start. So I just I really am laying that out to remind everybody kind of the of the cadence we're on and let everybody know. But are there any questions? Well, in [9:38:48 AM] there any questions? Well, in that case, members without objection, the audit and finance committee nominating committee for a new city auditor will go into executive session to discuss personnel issues related to the appointment of a new city auditor pursuant to section 551074 of the government code. Is there any discussion then? Without objection, we will go into executive session on item number three under 551074 of the government code. It is 9:39 A.M. Thanks, everybody. We'll be back in a little while. Back to order. Although we were [10:21:35 AM] Back to order. Although we were just in recess, we were not in recess. We had gone into an executive session. The committee, the audit and finance committee of the Austin city council has completed its executive session. We spoke pursuant to 55107 for the Texas government code on personnel matters related to the hiring of a new city auditor, which is item three on the committee's agenda. We have completed that, and we are now that we have completed the entire agenda of the audit and finance committee. So, without objection, we will adjourn the meeting of the audit and finance committee at 10:22 A.M. We are adjourned. Thanks, everybody.