The Appleton Finance Committee met 09/20/2021 and took up a number of items. Although they voted on 4 separate items, the meeting still came in slightly under 10 minutes.
Committee members William Siebers (District 1), Vered Meltzer (District 2), Brad Firkus (District 3), and Matt Reed (District 8 ) were all present while Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) was excused.
The first item they took up was Action Item #21-1323 Request to approve Apple Fields Development Agreement.
Director of Public Works Paula Vandehey stated that this was a very standard new subdivision development agreement. The only city contribution was $17,000 toward the subdivision’s bridge structure.
The committee members had no questions and approved the agreement unanimously.
The second item was # 21-1324 Request to award the Transportation Utility Funding Study to Ehlers/RA Smith consulting team in an amount not to exceed $72,187. This is the contract for the transportation utility study the Common Council approved in August.
Director Vandehey explained that the city received two proposals. In both cases, two consulting firms joined together to create a team. The selection committee reviewed both of those proposals and “really overwhelmingly thought that the team of Ehlers and RA Smith were the most qualified. They’ve done, by far, the most of these transportation utility studies for communities in Wisconsin, and we just wanted to make sure that we had the most experienced because this is something…pretty new in the state, and [we] just wanted to make sure that we were teaming up with the firm that we felt had the most experience in this particular area.”
None of the committee members had any questions, and they approved the contract unanimously.
They then moved on to item #21-1325 Request to award three (3) year contract to CliftonLarsonAllen LLP to provide audit services for the 2021, 2022 and 2023 annual audits.
Alderperson Siebers asked for the Finance Director to comment on this and explain why CliftonLarsonAllen LLP was selected considering that they were the second highest bidder.
Finance Director Tony Saucerman responded that the city received 6 responses to their request for proposals. Those responses were reviewed by a staff of six people which included 3 people from the Finance Department, 1 person from Valley Transit, 1 from the Department of Public Works, and 1 from the Attorney’s Office. In addition to the quoted price, they looked at a number of qualitative things, including…
- The size of the firm.
- How invested they were in governmental auditing. Auditing governmental entities is a specialty area that that not all firms do.
- Their understanding of the scope of the audit. Some of the proposals were very detailed and the city had a very good idea of how they would conduct the audit—how much they would audit the departments, the various areas they would go into, and what they would do. Other proposals were very generic and not nearly as detailed.
- The experience the firm has auditing Wisconsin municipalities. This was very important because the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin has its own rules that Appleton has to abide by, and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation supplies money to Valley Transit and has its own rules that Valley Transit has to adhere to. It was important that the auditing firm knows those rules before they go into the audit. The city received a couple proposals from out of state firms—one that had mostly Illinois clients and another with mostly Minnesota clients. There would probably be a lot of learning that those firms needed to do about Wisconsin regulations.
- The staff plan. The two firms that know Appleton the best who have audited the City of Appleton in the past, estimated between 640 and 670 hours to do the audits, while other firms that didn’t know Appleton as well were estimating around 400 or 450 hours.
Director Saucerman said they had to be careful to not just take the cheapest price because they would get what they paid for. Yes, some of the prices looked good on paper, but city staff had concerns about the number of hours that the firms would commit to the job and that they wouldn’t perform good audits. The cost did account for 25% of the overall score each of the firms received “and despite that the two firms that knew us the best came in the top two scores” and CliftonLarsonAllen received the top score. “They’ve done really good work for us. We’re very comfortable with them, and I think having them come back—they already know us very well, so they can dive deeper into what we’re doing, vs a firm coming in brand new who’s just gonna have to learn what we’re doing. It’s gonna take them probably 3 years just to get that down. Whereas a firm that already knows coming in is probably gonna give us a much better audit and be able to dive deeper into things than somebody brand new. So those all kind of factored into the reason why we chose CliftonLarsonAllen again this year.”
Alderperson Sieber opened the floor up for questions.
Alderperson Meltzer said, “I think over the last 5 years I’ve been very impressed with CliftonLarsonAllen’s work. I think that there’s sort of a trust and a comfort in that consistency. This certainly isn’t something that we’d want to give to someone out of state who doesn’t know how our city works.” Their very thorough process benefits Appleton and is something that the city can have confidence in. That confidence is important to maintain.
The contract was approved unanimously.
The final action item was #21-1326 CEA Review Committee minutes for August 23, 2021 meeting. They had no discussion about this and approved the minutes unanimously.
The agenda also included a number of information items related to various pavement and construction contracts. None of the committee members had any questions or wanted any information beyond what was already in the agenda packet.
The meeting then adjourned.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=892637&GUID=F978C870-EE80-4CA5-B934-7F71977CC4A7
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