Carson City Audit Committee recommends Eide Bailey as CPA firm

Eide Bailey LLP, a certified public accountancy firm, was recommended Monday for a contract to handle the city’s external audit work.

The Carson City Audit Committee, which helps oversee internal audit work through Moss Adams LLP, a consulting firm, made the Eide Bailey recommendation to Carson City’s Board of Supervisors during a committee session at which the panel also reviewed progress on various internal auditing programs previously initiated and either completed or in process.

The Eide Bailey firm is region and works in at least a dozen states, including Nevada, and originally was recommended over a Utah firm by the city’s Finance Review and Selection Committee. Finance Director Nick Providenti told the panel when the recommendation reaches the city’s governing board it will be for a three-year contract.

Supervisor Lori Bagwell, the governing board member who serves on the audit panel, recused herself from the panel vote because, she said, her son works for the CPA firm.

Mark Steranka of Moss Adams, which is a large CPA and business consulting firm, reported on studies or work on strategic planning, performance metrics, city employees’ efficiency, fleet management, handling of facilities, and other ongoing efforts.

Steranka and Providenti told the committee an update of the strategic plan under City Manager Nick Marano’s watch is under way and performance metrics already in process would be updated to fit those plan alterations. Marano started with the city last June. Steranka and Providenti said any direct impact on the city budget from performance metrics would await the 2016-15 fiscal year as next year’s city budget recommendations are only weeks away.

They said there have been some meetings with department heads and there was a strategic planning session with both the Board of Supervisors and department heads in February. There also will be public outreach to obtain citizen in put before the latest strategic plan is put in place and performance metric elements to coincide with it are updated and finalized. “We will revisit the performance metrics,” Steranka said.