The price tag associated with bringing an outside accounting firm onboard to assist the city clerk’s office with services and financial reconciliation continues to add up for the city of Yazoo City.
GranthamPoole, a contracted accounting firm for the city of Yazoo City, was originally hired by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen last summer to cover the city’s banking reconciliation process. According to the June 10 board minutes, GranthamPoole was approved for accounting reconciliation at $25,000 to cover May 2023-April 2024. The board also approved the firm for accounting services for the city at a cost of $2,500 a month. Both votes were passed with Alderwoman Elizabeth Thomas casting the sole opposing vote.
GranthamPoole appeared in the city’s board minutes again from its Nov. 8 board meeting. With no opposition, the city council approved the firm to provide training in the city clerk’s office at a cost between $3,000 and $8,000 “to address items recorded improperly and unrecorded activity.” A separate order was also included in those minutes to pay the firm $17,500 “in additional billing for unrecorded activity, reclassification of items recorded to wrong accounts.”
The beginning of the working relationship between GranthamPoole and the city of Yazoo City was originally met with resistance from Thomas. She expressed concern over whether the city was receiving accurate financial records if the accounts had not been reconciled from May 2023 until last April. She also added that when City Clerk Kaneilia Williams was hired last year, she was under the impression that she could handle the bank reconciliation.
But Mayor David Starling said it was shared with the city council from the beginning that Williams was not a certified public accountant, and that the reconciliation would have to be outsourced.
An outside accounting firm hired to handle some of the city’s financial operations is nothing new. Marshall Conico, with the Jackson, Braswelll, Mullins, and Bailey firm, was paid by the city for several years until he resigned from its post last year. The idea of hiring an outside firm was met with resistance even then in 2017 when former alderman Jack Varner expressed his opposition.
“We are paying twice the money to get one job done,” Varner said, in a 2017 Herald article. “We are spending all this money in the city clerk’s office. We are buying the same real estate twice in there.”
Varner’s argument in 2017 was that there were too many people in the city clerk’s office, noting that the office ran in the past with three to four employees. However, presently, outside of GranthamPoole’s contractual services, there are four employees within the city clerk’s office.
Starling reminded the board that an outside firm to handle the banking reconciliation was the exact same thing that Conico, with the Jackson, Braswelll, Mullins, and Bailey firm, was doing for several years.
“This is a part of what Marshall was doing,” Starling said, in the previous meeting. “Marshall was doing at least ten thousand additional dollars per month in things, such as payroll, transferring funds, finding what account this and that came out of. The city clerk (Kaneilia Williams) handles all of that now, but the city clerk cannot reconcile the books with the bank. I don’t think any municipality has their city clerk reconciling their accounts with the banks.”
Representatives from GranthamPoole were present during the Nov. 8 city council meeting but only spoke to the board during the closed session. The Herald questioned why a financial report from the firm was not provided during the open session. Board Attorney Lilli Evans-Bass told The Herald that “there was not a report provided or presented during executive session. The executive session topic was in regard to a personnel matter in the city clerk’s office.”
The Herald then filed a public record request to inspect the documents and reports from GranthamPoole, which included about 500 pages worth of material. Several city accounts were included in the report ranging from the general fund to municipal court to solid waste. The reports showed what checks, payments, deposits and other credits were cleared and uncleared. For example, the uncleared checks and payments within the general fund from Aug. 1, 2023 until July 31, 2024 totaled $12,795,749, based on the reports provided to The Herald for inspection.
