BY JACOB SZETO
City of Oakridge, Oregon. Photo via functoruser/Flickr.com
OAKRIDGE, Ore. – Oakridge is facing a serious cash shortage after its bank statement showed the City had $420,000 less than planned, prompting a city planning commissioner to solicit private loans from citizens.
George Custer began seeking “investors” soon after the City acknowledged it would be laying off eight city employees, about one quarter of the staff, to fill the budget gap, saying it was a win-win for the City and the citizens.
Custer is a volunteer planning commissioner for the City of Oakridge and claims he was not working on behalf of the City. Instead, he was soliciting loans for the City as a “concerned citizen.”
Both the city administrator and the mayor knew about the plan and considered it an option to keep the City from defaulting on its payments and going into bankruptcy.
“That was a plan B in case other things didn’t work” said Donald Hampton, City of Oakridge mayor.
Custer says that half a dozen citizens have agreed to give the City a loan if a loan from the bank does not materialize, but the list of citizens will remain anonymous for now.
Not all of the citizens solicited to loan the City money were happy. Eddie Roberts, an 87-year-old man, and well-known figure in the City of Oakridge and Westfir, says Custer, a man he has never met, asked him to loan the City money, to which he replied no.
“Why would I loan them money if they can’t even balance their checkbook each month?” asked Roberts.
The City recently discovered it had far less money than officials thought. According to Gordon Zimmerman, the city administrator, the adopted budget has the City about $420,000 richer than it actually is.
The shortfall wasn’t discovered until the City become aware it did not have enough money to pay all of its bills, leading to the realization that there might be something amiss in the City’s finances.
For a city with a general fund budget of just over $3 million, a $420,000 budget mishap is a big deal.
According to Hampton and Zimmerman, the responsibility of reconciling the City’s bank account to the budget falls on Ruth Ann Plumlee, the City’s finance director, although both acknowledged the oversight ultimately fell on the city administrator.
“I am not casting blame on anyone but myself,” said Zimmerman.
The City of Oakridge has not completed an audit since 2008, something Zimmerman blames on “the difficulty in making the numbers work.”
The 2009 audit currently in process has run into a number of problems, resulting in delays and the auditor’s refusal to sign off on the audit. Zimmerman says the auditors have had a number of questions and issues over the years that needed to be resolved before the audit could be completed.
At issue now is a $67,000 temporary account with insufficient documentation, and thus the 2009 and any subsequent audits have yet to be completed.
This isn’t this first time auditors have said the City has insufficient documentation. In the 2008 audit, auditors noted a total of eight “significant deficiencies”:
- Lack of internal control policies;
- Difficulties in obtaining documentation;
- Untimely account balance reconciliations;
- Lack of compensating controls in: journal entries, bank reconciliations, cash disbursements, and utility billing revenues;
- No consistent process of journal entry reviews;
- Excessive journal entries made to correct or adjust initial journal entries;
- Bank reconciliations were not correctly reconciled to the general ledger;
- The City did not keep adequate backup for adjustments to customers’ utility accounts.
Zimmerman says most of the 2008 deficiencies have been addressed but couldn’t say which ones.
The $67,000 temporary account issue is expected to be discussed at Thursday’s Council meeting along with the bank tax anticipation loan, according to Zimmerman.
The lefty/liberals running the town come out with this with a straight face and maybe a little smerk telling the citizens they should pony up some more bucks for the L/L’s to squander some more. They said it’s not there,sounds like Obumbler telling us those “shovel ready jobs weren’t really there after all,——chuckle,chuckle.
If my company had 2008 audit results like the results outlined in the article, someone would (at the max) be going to prison or at the least be fired. Those are outrageous findings and scream of skimming or fraud.
No,I do not live there,I liv in KY,but I gotta ask this.Where did the missing moeny end up going to?I mean it didn’t just disappear on it’s own and someone has to know what happened to it and or where it went to
Maybe the will just blame the Tea Party.
No oakridge city official asked for any money to help with the monetarty crisis. Yes, George Custer is a volunteer on the Planning Commission, but he has no authority nor receives any renumeration from the city of Oakridge. When able, he attends monthly Planning Comission meetings to discuss ideas. His volunteering hardly makes him a city official.
As a private citizen, Mr. Custer asked the other good samaritans who els might want to loan the city money. Mr. Eddie Robert’s name was given. When asked by Mr. Custer, Mr. Robert’s declined. No pressure or discord was put on Mr. Roberts. This should have been the end of it. Unfortunately, someone called a Salem, Oregon newspaper with the story. And then, the reporter put a spin on the article to make it appear something other than it is.
The reality is that several private individuals, who love Oakridge, sought out town officials and offered to help the city in case a bank loan could not be procured. They do not want to see their beloved city go bankrupt. It is their belief that Oakridge will overcome the problem. Let me reiterate: No taxpayer’s money was being used. No city official initiated this .
Names of prospective donors were not being given in order to protect their privacy. The media is not good at being truthful these days.
Sayre Custer
Astonishingly illuminating bless you, I reckon your current visitors would definitely want far more articles like that keep up the good effort.
I agree with Charles Queen. I also agree with the statements made by Sayre Custer but will also add this: Regardless of who solicited what, the money is still missing. It went somewhere. As Paul stated, if my company was in this disarray serious consequences would be occurring in a more immediate fashion. I have only lived here a short while and before this surfaced my opinion of the city is not one I am proud of. No, I will not move. I love the location to the mountains, etc.
We get rid of one “Sue Bond” and we get another “Hampton” The bad thing about it we had a chance to clean house and we didn’t. The reason they didn’t Fire him, the council said “well he has a nice family”. take it from a long time volunteer here. The reason we did not Fire him is this. The City is mostly Liberal Demos and a huge amount of Mormon’s and guess what..you got it Zimmerman is the leader of the Morman Church here and a flaming Liberal. The council is 4 Demos and 3 Republican..guess who loses the Council voting battles