The city of Yachats has scheduled a one-hour community meeting for 1 p.m. Wednesday to respond to questions about its conversion to a new financial reporting system seven months ago.
The city and its part-time finance director have held a series of meetings with commission members the past 2-3 months to walk them through changes and issues with the new system. Some commission members and chairs have struggled to understand the new system and how to gather pertinent information and generate meaningful reports from it.
That came to a head most recently last week during a meeting of the city’s Public Works and Streets Commission when chair Bob Bennett abruptly ended a discussion on financial reports for water and sewer accounts.
“We’re six months into this and we still don’t have a solid set of numbers,” Bennett said. “This is an exercise in futility.”
Notice of the session was emailed Friday by City Manager Shannon Beaucaire to chairs and vice-chairs of its four commissions, city employees and a handful of others. There was also a notice on the Post Office bulletin board. But the notice was not on the city’s website or emailed to residents via the city’s news alert system.
In her email announcing the meeting, Beaucaire said former city financial consultant Tom Lauritzen had raised concerns about “noise arising” from commissions, some City Council members and council candidates about the conversion process, financial reports, financial data and other issues.
“I am incredibly appreciative of Tom bringing this to our attention as we had a different impression from the informational sessions we have begun having with the commissions and committees,” Beaucaire wrote. “When faced with multiple points of view/questions/concerns, my mediator background leads me to bring everyone together to have an open conversation so we can productively move forward, and we can all get the same information at the same time. And with this information I want an open forum for every citizen.”
