Twin Lakes hires new auditing firm

By Gail Peckler-Dziki Correspondent

Twin Lakes Administrator Dave Cox presented the Twin Lakes Village Board with proposals from four auditing firms at the April 16 board meeting.

Twin Lakes has a policy requiring a change of auditors after five years. Previously that had been three years, but the last auditor, Rotrof and Jeansen, will conduct the year-end financial report that the new auditing firm will then audit. That service will cost almost $8,000 and the village had two proposals for that. The other proposal was higher.

Submitted proposals were from Deignan and Associates, SC (Lake Geneva) $10,916 and Reilly, Penner and Benton, LLP (Milwaukee) $24,000; Schenck (Milwaukee) $26,500 and Andrea and Orendorff, LLP (Kenosha) $32,144.

Schenk was not the lowest bid, but Cox said the Schenk proposal had 80 hours more than two of the others. Schenk also detailed other services that Cox said would benefit the village and its auditing process.

The village had dealt with one of the other auditing firms before and Cox said that the services were adequate but didn’t go quite far enough.

“The village is always interested in more testing and sampling,” Cox said. “We do want more sampling activities about court issues. We should have things followed from the start to the end. And we still need to work toward more segregation of duties.”

The proposed bid of $26,500 included 250 hours of service and the audit for the Community Library. Twin Lakes is currently the fiscal agent for the library, which was created by an agreement between Twin Lakes, Randall, Salem, Paddock Lake and Silver Lake.

The library audit cost for 2011 was $11,500. Cox said he expects it will cost about half of that for 2012. The library pays this cost either directly to the auditor or by reimbursement to the Village.

Rotrof and Jeansen audited the library last year and it was somewhat costly, since the library had not had an actual audit for a long time. Included in that audit was moving the financial operations of the library from a cash basis to an accrual basis, the basis used for governmental agencies. Cox said that since no drastic work was needed for the library this year, the cost would be somewhat lower.

Trustee Kevin Fitzgerald said he would be more comfortable with accepting the contract for one year, with the option to extend should the village be satisfied with the service. “A five-year contract makes me a little nervous,” he said.

The rest of the board agreed and Cox said he would have a conversation about that change, along with requesting a guarantee for the quoted cost of services.

 

Committee appointments confirmed

The following residents were reappointed to committees for another term. Community Growth; Joe Anselmo, Barbara Youngs and Richard Diedrich with terms ending in April 2014; Board of Appeals, Michael Nathan; Plan Commission Dennis Deeter and Cemetery Board Mary Chodak, all with terms ending in April 2015; Board of Review, Barbara Chapman and Park Commission, Cliff Cantwell with terms ending in April 2017. Kevin Fitzgerald will replace Sharon Bower as the Village Board representative on the Community Library Board.


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