.png)
City leaders acknowledged years of disorganized finances, poor recordkeeping and high staff turnover during a sobering update at the April 15 council meeting.
The presentation, led by Interim City Manager Isaac Turner and accounting consultants from Gradient Solutions, laid out the scope of the city’s financial challenges and the path ahead. An initial review of the books confirmed that Elgin’s finance department has been “treading water” amid personnel shortages and inconsistent accounting practices, with the city now rushing to prepare for the next audit and budget cycle.
“We’re not here to ring a fire alarm when we don’t smell any smoke,” Turner said. “We are here to do some cleanup, some straightening up and putting things in order. It’s large, it’s voluminous and it’s going to take some time.”
Financial cleanup
The city has been without a permanent finance director for several years now, a factor lead consultant Cal Webb said contributes to the disorganization.
“There may have been some (issues) in the past… but today we have to get ready for the audit,” Webb said. “There’s no organization, public or private, that doesn’t have some gap somewhere.”
Gradient’s groundwork for the upcoming audit, scheduled to begin in June, includes reviewing past transactions, reconciling bank accounts and correcting general ledger entries.
“As you keep looking, you turn over rocks—it’s possible other things pop up,” Webb said. “It’s a lot of work without a finance director.”
Pam Sanders, Elgin’s human resources director who has also been supervising finance operations, said efforts are underway to restructure and restaff the department. The city is working with executive search firm SGR to fill the critical vacancy and plans to reclassify additional positions.
“We’re doing what we can with the limited number of people that we have,” Sanders said. “We’re already in that process.”
Turner told the council that the city is focused on two goals—responding to the prior audit while preparing for the next one, and building a solid foundation for the upcoming budget. He said the financial issues likely began four or five years ago and were compounded by staff turnover.
“How do you eat this elephant and where do you take your first bites at? The audit and the budget are two critical elements of that,” Turner added.
Forensic debate
Following the presentation, Councilwoman YaLecia Love asked Turner whether the situation warranted a forensic audit, potentially exploring past city misconduct.
“Traditionally, when people are talking about forensic audits, they’re looking at some theft of funds, malfeasance—some gross misappropriation of something to the point of personal aggrandizement, or someone benefitting from it,” Turner said. “I have not seen any smoke that would cause me to think that we need a forensic audit.”
A forensic audit could cost as much as $150,000 and would not resolve existing financial problems, according to Turner.
Webb also addressed the question, recognizing that “those things do occur in local government space.”
Before deferring to Gradient team member Lori Langford about specific red flags, he noted that a forensic audit would add complexity to an already challenging situation and may not be useful if former staff are no longer with the city.
“I have not seen anything yet that I think could be fraud… but I haven’t looked at every transaction,” said Langford, who has been leading the transaction reviews. “I have seen where mistakes have been made, and we need to place some corrections, but as we’re going through each of the financial transactions—bond funds and spending funds and that type of thing—I’m finding strange ways that it was recorded into the books. I’m trying to understand why they could have done it that way and also advise how do we do it better in the future.”
Turner confirmed that if any instances of fraud were to be found, the council would be made aware.
“I liken this more to messy bookkeeping—real, real, real messy bookkeeping for an extended period of time,” he added.
Councilman Al Rodriguez pressed further, asking whether problems discovered so far have led Gradient to widen their scope.
“Yes, when you see one thing, it’s normally connected to others,” Langford said, sharing an example of recurring misinputs. “I do not see that someone was trying to hide something, I feel that they only understood how to do half this work. They didn’t understand how to take it all the way through the governmental accounting spectrum.”
Getting it done
Turner said the team has worked diligently to trace records, but the volume of questionable entries makes it difficult to investigate every thread while still meeting audit and budget deadlines.
“It’s been a long time that this has been going on, so there’s a lot of twists and turns and some things that, candidly, I have not seen done that way in 40 years,” he added.
Love followed up by asking how confident Turner felt about building a reliable budget.
“I’ve been frustrated,” Turner said. “I feel I’ve got to get you a budget that we can have some level of confidence in. That’s my job, that’s why you have me here—we will get you a budget. It won’t be easy, it’ll be different.”
Still, the public remains hesitant. Several residents during the meeting’s comment period questioned the city’s financial oversight, called for a forensic audit and expressed concern about the lack of explanation surrounding the removal of former City Manager Tom Mattis.
