Council questions furniture spending spree

By Scott NeufeldTuesday, July 11, 2006, http://www.dailycourier.ca/article_353.php
When Vernon city councillor Barry Beardsell asked staff to clarify why $24,000 was spent on office furniture in the 2005 budget, he never suspected there could be even more cash tucked away under the cushions.City finance manager Bernie Fehrmann reported back to council at Monday’s meeting and said that in fact $86,332.88 had been spent on furniture last year – more than three times the amount shown in the budget. “This just goes to show to the public how little is known about what was hidden in the budget,” Beardsell said.Beardsell said he can’t understand why he wasn’t told that another $60,000 had been spent on furniture when the issue was raised at the June 26 council meeting. He said he should have been informed of the additional purchases right away.“What council knows about what is going on at city hall about expenses is virtually non-existent and is atrocious,” he said.Mayor Wayne Lippert told Beardsell that he was being unnecessarily harsh in his criticisms of Fehrmann.“Personally, I take exception to you questioning the integrity of our treasurer,” he said.Beardsell replied, “I’m not questioning the integrity of the treasurer, I’m saying the procedure followed is not appropriate.”The furniture expenditures were approved by former chief administrative officer Ron Campbell, Fehrmann said. He said that furniture purchases were spread in different parts of the budget as expenditures for different departments.More than $25,000 of the total amount was spent to replace furniture at the Vernon RCMP detachment, another $24,510 went to the Operation Division to replace furniture and for furnishings for the new operations manager. City Hall spent $21,320 on its own to buy new furniture, not including, $3,066 in furnishings that went mainly to the occupational health and safety manager, another $2,227 to improve the administration area, $1,566 for community development and another $2,318 to various other divisions.Chief administrator Leon Gous said there are several million line items in the budget, most of which council never see. He said past councils have not shown interest in seeing every budget detail.“I’m not interested to go into any defence to councillor Beardsell,” he said. “It’s really council’s wish how much they wish to see with each line item.” Beardsell said in a later interview that to clear up the city’s flawed financial process the finance committee, of which he used to be a member, needs to look at ways to dig deeper into the annual budget. The process has Beardsell somewhat confused because he said he is unsure of whether the treasurer is accountable to council or to the city administrator. He said it was far too difficult for him to have his budget questions answered by city staff and council needs to be allowed to give the budget closer scrutiny.“If a councillor wants to look at the budget, at every single line, that councillor should be able to do that,” he said.