CLEARLAKE — Clearlake”s new city administrator, Joan Phillipe, was introduced Thursday during the city council”s regular meeting. A meet-and-greet with Phillipe will precede the Nov. 10 regular meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. at Clearlake City Hall.
The meet-and-greet event will provide citizens with an opportunity to meet Phillipe and ask her questions regarding her service with the city.
District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown extended a warm welcome to Phillipe Thursday on behalf of citizens of the Kelseyville area. Brown presented Phillipe with a gift basket filled with Kelseyville-area products and gift certificates. The basket also included a free pass for all Coastal Mountain Conference high school sporting events.
In regular business the council authorized the city administrator to contract with a qualified firm to conduct sales tax audits and prepare state-mandated cost claims. Interim Finance Director Sandra Sato provided the report to the council. She said the city does not have an agreement with a professional sales taxes consultant to do continuous audits of sales taxes to make sure that the city receives all the sales tax revenues it is entitled to. She said such audits are necessary because many mistakes are made in filing sales taxes and even in a city of Clearlake”s size correction of mis-allocations will result in additional revenues for the city.
Sato said there are two major firms that perform sales tax audits. She said the firms have expertise and specialized software to determine when sales taxes are incorrectly allocated to other jurisdictions and are compensated by assessing a 25 percentage of the amount they recover for the next four quarters. Additionally, they charge nominal fees, around $2,000 annually, for providing monitoring and regular reports that will help the city project future sales taxes.
Sato said state-mandated costs are paid by the State of California to reimburse cities for mandated programs, which change every year. “Due to delays in receiving the reimbursement the former city manager discontinued contracting with a consultant to prepare the claims and as a consequence these revenues have not been received in the recent past,” she said. “The estimated cost of $2,600 per year can be deducted from revenues received and if authorized staff will obtain at least three bids from qualified firms.”
The council also authorized the city administrator to contract with a qualified firm to prepare a cost allocation plan. Sato said a cost allocation plan is necessary for a variety of reasons such as proving that the maintenance of effort was met with respect to Proposition 42 funds. “A recent review of our maintenance of effort by the State Controller”s office indicated that the city will need to provide more evidence that it is maintaining the required maintenance of effort should an audit be conducted by the state,” she said. “In addition, a cost allocation plan will provide documentation of redevelopment overhead costs, overhead for grants, etc.
This should result in additional cost recovery to the general fund as a result of recovery of central service overhead costs.”
The council approved a request for the city administrator to execute a lease agreement with North Coast Opportunities (NCO) for city-owned property at 4700 Golf Avenue. NCO is expected to use the building for services including a food pantry, food roundtable, volunteer network assistance for community groups, assistance to low-income families through the Earned Income Tax Credit program and Rural Communities Child Care.
NCO will be charged a rental rate of $1 per year and will be responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the building.
