Ione council hears delayed 2021 audit update, reviews 2025–26 revenue and directs staff on CFDs and budget workshops

Ione City Council met in a special budget workshop on July 10, 2025, to receive an update on the incomplete fiscal year 2021 audit and to review revenue and expense reports for the current year and a draft revenue plan for fiscal year 2025–26. Interim Finance Manager Andrea Bonham presented the audit status and highlighted reconciliation items city staff must address before the audit is finalized.

Why it matters: The unresolved audit and several accounting irregularities the finance team flagged affect the city’s year-end reporting, require follow-up work before audit signoff and inform the council’s decisions about whether to contract outside services for the budget book. Council members also sought options for Community Facilities District (CFD) rate adjustments that could affect hundreds of property owners.

Bonham told the council the city’s external auditor is still working through document requests and that some requested backup cannot be located. “The first item agenda is the update on the, 2021 audit. What I did is I included the email directly from the auditor since it was pretty detailed,” Bonham said, explaining she forwarded the auditor’s timeline and request log rather than paraphrasing it for council. Bonham reported one payable-related request will take the auditor roughly 15 hours once invoices are received and said, based on the hours the auditor listed, completion likely will extend into late July or early August.

Council members and staff described a recurring problem: the auditor asks for records, the city provides documents, and months later the auditor again requests the same items. Bonham summarized the practical limit of staff’s search: “At some point, we're gonna have to take the hit, take the finding,” she said, referring to missing older records that cannot be located despite extensive searches.

Public comment echoed the frustration. Resident Susan Bridal urged the city to seek duplicate invoices from vendors: “I don't know why the vendor can't provide a duplicate copy of the invoice,” she said.

Audit follow-up items Bonham…