Brookshire council questions city bank accounts, asks for audit review

Mayor Pro Tem Tim Richards and several Brookshire City council members pressed city staff on the makeup and recent transactions in the city’s pooled bank accounts during the Feb. 6 regular council meeting at City Hall.

The discussion began after the council removed two consent-items for separate consideration: a bank account balance report from New First Bank and a Brookshire Police Department list of take-home and leased vehicles. The council also postponed agenda item 6(a), a racial-profiling report and memorandum from the Brookshire Police Department, after staff said the report is incomplete and will be placed on the next council agenda.

The matter of most immediate concern to council members was the city’s use of ICS accounts (insured cash sweep/ICS). Ms. Guite, a city finance staff member, described the accounts as “high interest accounts that are specifically used for holding the majority of the city's money,” saying they are split among several banks so balances remain within the FDIC insurance limit. “All the money is completely FDIC insured, and it is divided up the way it is because it is more financially sound,” she said. She explained each ICS account maintains a transaction money-market account with a target daily balance; when the money-market drops below the target the bank automatically sweeps funds from the ICS into the money-market, and when the money-market exceeds the target the bank sweeps the excess back into the ICS.

Council members cited the packet’s balances while asking for more detail. The packet shows a combined balance of $7,713,620.50 across multiple accounts. Ms. Guite referred to the general fund ICS account ending in 929 and said the attached money-market has a daily target balance of $100,000. She also said the statements included December and January activity and that interest earned across the accounts appeared to be “roughly $120,000 … for just one month,” as presented in the documents. Council members pointed to several large intra-account transactions listed in the statements (presented in meeting materials) including withdrawals of approximately $75,000, $98,000, $65,000 and $46,000.

After the staff explanation, a council member moved, “that we hire an auditor to come in and audit the bank account from 2022 to date.” The motion was stated on the record but no second or formal vote was recorded in the transcript before the meeting segment ended. Another council member asked whether the requested audit would duplicate work already covered by the city’s regular audit contract, noting that an annual audit is performed; the transcript records that question but does not show a staff or council resolution on whether the existing audit covers the requested scope.

Miss Glover, filling in for City Secretary Miss Molina, answered some procedural questions about agenda items but deferred technical accounting questions to city finance staff. The council did not take a recorded vote on the auditor motion during the meeting segment in the transcript.

What happens next: the racial-profiling report was postponed to the next council agenda; the bank-account and police-vehicle consent items were removed for discussion at this meeting; and a council member formally proposed an independent audit of bank accounts covering 2022 to the present. The transcript does not record a second, vote, contract authorization, or a timeline for completing any outside audit request.