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City Services Auditor: 2016 public health bond expenditures conformed to ballot text; CSA outlines mid‑year priorities
Summary
The City Services Auditor presented a Cummins-conducted expenditure audit of the 2016 public health and safety bond and found tested expenditures conformed with bond text; CSA also described its mid‑year program, budget (~$20M), and upcoming audit work including additional GEO bond audits and performance projects.
Mark De La Rosa (acting director of audits, Controller's Office) and Simon Wadsworth (Cummins Construction Management) presented an expenditure audit of the 2016 public health and safety bond. Cummins said it tested roughly CHF 51.9M (75% of the sampled Public Works spend) and found those tested expenditures conformed to the legal text of the bond; the audit offered no substantive recommendations other than for Public Works to continue ensuring expenditures conform to the bond language.
Committee members asked whether future audits could include additional checks such as certified payroll or more explicit financial‑performance metrics. The audit team said they did not test certified payroll in this engagement but could consider adding such objectives to future audits. Members asked the CSA to propose metrics the committee could adopt to better measure bond performance (spend-down rate, change-order percentages, soft-cost vs. hard-cost breakdowns) and to report back at the next meeting.
Peg Stevenson (director of performance, City Services Auditor) briefed the committee on CSA operations and mid‑year activities, including a roughly $20M operating budget (charter-derived allocation), a carryforward of about $4.6M, approximately 68 staff, and ongoing projects (patient-flow analysis, Healthy Streets Operations Center support, capital-permitting improvement work). The CSA described its GEO bond expenditure-audit program (nine audits completed to date) and said two affordable-housing GEO audits (2016 and 2019) and the 2018 Seawall bond audit remain in the pipeline.
Why it matters: the expenditure audit provides the committee with a documented test that bond funds were spent consistent with ballot language for the audited sample; members asked the CSA to refine audit scopes to capture additional financial-performance and compliance checks.
What’s next: CSA agreed to propose candidate financial‑performance metrics and to consider certified‑payroll testing for future audits; the audit office will coordinate with the committee on scope for upcoming bond audits.
