Tavares, FL - Jan. 9, 2013
Normally, I support any reduction in taxes as a general principal.
But, what if you paid $2000 in annual property taxes, then found the County Tax Collector was not issuing tax bills to all the residents of the Plantations retirement community?
Or, you were a law firm partner and found staff was not billing clients who graduated from Eustis High School?
Would you be mad?
Well, Lake County did just that until a recent audit report described in the Daily Commercial. They were not invoicing pet owners for State required pet license renewals or failure to get tags. And, if they had fees like surrounding counties, they could have collected $500,000 per year at least to
Since the Animal Services Dept. is funded with over $1-million from the general fund which is mostly funded by your property tax funds, all homeowners are paying to highly subsidize pet owners and animal services rather than just pet owners paying the costs for Animal Services through fees.
Kudos to Daily Commercial reporter Greg Jones for reporting this (link is below). I knew the report, which was published on Nov. 16, was out, but had not read it yet.
One of my first jobs while in college after returning from the Army was as a computer operator on the graveyard shift for the City of Los Angeles. One job the night crew had was printing all the annual invoices to animal owners in the City of Los Angeles to collect fees for pet licenses. It took three high speed chain printers 3 days just to print the renewal forms, but they did do it to collect fees to offset the costs of Animal Services programs.
In contrast, Lake County has rights to such State required pet license fees, but has not expended any effort to collect them, so 93% of pets are not licensed in Lake County and your property taxes subsidize Animal Services by over $1-million per year.
The Daily Commercial article below by Greg Jones quotes details from the recent audit of animal services by the new Head Auditor at the Court Clerk, Bob Melton, and says they could be getting an added revenue of $455,000 if bills were sent out AND tax rates were hiked to levels used by nearby counties. Lake County rates are really LOW compared to most other counties. The increased license fees, IF collected, could be used to offset the annual general fund (from property taxes) subsidy of Animal Services of $1,137,824. The department does have other revenues and fees, but they still are $1.1-million short, thus requiring the subsidies. I think the fees for “unfixed” pets should be higher.
Here is the article in today’s Daily Commercial.
http://www.dailycommercial.com/News/LakeCounty/01jan2012animalaudit
Here is the 18 page audit report – since the Internal Audit Dept. is part of the Court Clerk, the reports are on the Court Clerk’s website in the Internal Audit section.
Additionally, recommendation 5 explains that the County did not issue citations for missing pet licenses, thus they GAVE UP $531,000 MORE in revenues during FY 2011 and 2012 by not issuing citations which cost $150 the first time, and $500 per repeat violation. AND, if the owner does not pay, the County has the right to file a lien on their property, and they dropped the ball on that one too by not recording them for up to SIX months. So, basically, County employees and management (and Board members) were ignoring laws to collect revenues that were due. So, remember that if the Board asks to increase your property or other taxes, you have to wonder what legitimate income they are not collecting already.
The report does include responses from County management, and mostly they concurred with the recommendations. They did not explain the reasons why collections were not billed. The listing of lost revenues was hard to decipher, but it still seems like about $1-million per year was not collected, even though required.
And, when the audit report was added to the Lake County Board Agenda in November, it was in the "consent" agenda and not scheduled for discussion. WHY would the Lake County Board not openly discuss a fiscal fiasco like this in public?? The School District Board openly discusses all their audit reports, including a recent one over problems with a charter school.
So, another fiscal fiasco from Lake County. And this is just the first week in the new year. This also tells me that there is no clear program to review required revenue sources and ensure they are acted on.
The long string of missing business controls cited in the report indicates once again that the Board operations have no controller type oversight, and they need one.
This is the type of problem that occurs because the Board does not have their own Controller, OR because some former Commissioner ordered staff not to collect the funds. Instead, they rely on the Court Clerk’s office to do the accounting, but they have no Controller type of person monitoring inside operations for glitches like this. It is not uncommon for government agencies to have receivables that are not collected because staff don’t like collections work. OR, to be realistic, staff could also have been told by one or more Board members to not take any collection or fee increase actions.
Additionally, the audit disclosed that 7257 forms related to animal licenses had never been entered into a required software system so license information could be tracked. AND, the software was not capable of sending out renewal notices, so none were sent, although other counties do it with different software. That tells me that the Lake County Animal Services Dept. and the management hierarchy is apparently unaware of other County practices. A golden rule for government managers is to always know how their responsibility area compares to other county fees and work processes, AND state regulations, and Lake County is lacking in this. There should be an internal quarterly report from every Department head showing costs and metrics for their programs compared to other selected counties, AND work processes should be compared.
Since Animal Services also handles license fees and animal control for most cities, that also means those cities were shortchanged in revenues. Matter of fact, are the cities paying a fair cost for the services?
AND, recommendation 7 explains that veterinarians in the County are required to report rabies vaccinations to the County, but out of 30 vets in the County EIGHT SIX PERCENT (86%) are not turning in such reports. Why didn’t county management know about or act on that problem??? The result is that a person bit by a dog or cat could be asked to undergo painful rabies treatments because the vets and the County staff did not ensure rabies vaccination reports were turned in and tracked.
The Director over animal services is Gregg Welstead. The manager is Marjorie Boyd. I recommend both of them go to classes in management accounting and management processes to prevent repetition of this type of problem. If they say there were no resources or budget to implement a collection program, then I would say it was the manager’s responsibility to describe such situations and bring them to the County Manager and or Board to educate them on the issues and get funds. Low budgets are not an excuse for SHODDY management like this. Imagine if the fleet manager said he didn’t have a budget for brakes on county trucks, and didn’t tell senior management of the risks of not maintaining brakes. Board members should ensure such situations are reported to them, and not hidden if a Commissioner orders staff to do otherwise.
The report also recommends outsourcing be considered, and even the County response indicates they are looking at a proposal. Or, maybe they should turn this over to the County Tax Collector and give him a cut of the collections. I asked him (Bob McKee) about this yesterday and he said no one has asked him.
Kudos to the Court Clerk’s Director of Internal Audit, Bob Melton and his auditors for doing this audit, plus the Commissioners and staff for allowing the audit.
The Board is doing a lot of good things to improve the economy in Lake County, but their credibility is damaged by Fiscal Fiascos like this. It is time that the Board allows such comprehensive audits.
I gave public input on this issue at yesterday's Board meeting, and the Board Chair said this issue would be discussed when an upcoming workshop on the Animal Services Budget comes up.
We all want lost and abandoned animals to be cared for, but the question is should pet owners be paying for that, or ALL taxpayers. If the Lake County Board, after a PUBLIC HEARING, decides to continue paying for Animal Services from property taxes rather than pet owner fees, then let them establish the policy. But don't do it out of view and hiding audits and not discussing the issue in public. AND, they should annually disclose the cost of the policy to property tax payers if doing so.
What do you think? Should pet fees remain uncollected and all homeowner taxes subsidize Animal Services, or should Animal Services be self sufficient with adequate fees and pet owners pay for the services they receive? Post a comment and tell your County Commissioner.
Vance Jochim
Lake County Fiscal Rangers
Chief Fiscal Watchdog
Volunteers Searching for Ways to Improve Local Government Fiscal Management, Efficiency & Effectiveness
PO Box 1042
Tavares, FL 32778
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