Sunnyside council presses staff for finance reconciliation progress; contract worker and budgeting software under review

Councilors on July 14 pressed city staff for a clear timeline and status update on reconciling the city’s 2024 bank statements and other backlog finance work. The issue surfaced repeatedly during consent-agenda questions and later in a dedicated discussion about contract bookkeeping support.

Councilor Hancock asked staff for more timely, real-time answers during meetings; Councilor Hart and others asked for an emailed timeline tracking progress. Kelly (identified in the meeting as a finance lead) and interim city manager Jim Bridges said the backlog dated to incomplete work for 2024 and that Luis Lopez of Morlette Enterprises had been contracted part-time (two days per week, Tuesdays and Thursdays) to work on reconciling bank statements. "He is working part time on Tuesdays and Thursdays on the backlog of bank statements that had not been completed," Kelly said. Lopez’s work began around February, and he focused on January 2024 bank statements first; staff said each month averages about 80–88 pages to reconcile.

Nut graf: The council sought concrete timeline and progress reporting on the finance backlog and asked for itemized documentation for consent-agenda charges (for example, US Bank credit-card charges and a $3,221.07 component). Council members also requested copies of contract documents and ClearGov procurement details after staff said a ClearGov contract for cloud-based budgeting software has been signed under the contract services budget.

Specific concerns raised during consent-agenda review included: a VEBA (voluntary employees’ beneficiary association) payment of $4,487.50; multiple credit-card statement totals (a US Bank corporate payment totaling about $21,257 in one line item, which council asked to be broken out into per-card charges); and executive-services fund summaries where councilors could not immediately identify individual line items. Staff offered to provide detailed breakdowns by email and to print full credit-card statements for review.

On staffing, council members asked whether the city was actively recruiting for finance positions. Interim city manager Jim Bridges said interviews had been completed and a candidate had accepted an offer; the offer letter was awaiting the council’s signature. Staff also said an employee had recently resigned and that at least one position remained unadvertised due to medical leave.

Finally, Finance Director staff told council ClearGov is being implemented to host budget data (ClearGov will read data from the city’s accounting system, Springbrook) and that the final import and user setup were in progress; staff said they would provide the ClearGov contract and pricing to council on request.

Ending: Council directed staff to provide a timeline and status report on reconciliation progress, produce itemized vouchers and credit-card statements for the consent agenda, and circulate contract documents (Morlette Enterprises contract and ClearGov contract). Staff committed to follow-up emails and to add periodic status updates for council review.