Don’t worry – the financial statements are audited.

When asked about an operational audit a current member of city council said citizens should not worry, the city’s financial statements were audited.

Enron’s financial statements were also edited – and we all know just how much those audited financial statements protected Enron’s shareholders and creditors.

As a Chartered Accountant I audited and often prepared Financial Statements and know the limitations involved in financial audits, which is why audited financial statements contain disclaimers from the accountant(s) preparing the financial statements.

The important point to remember is that Financial Statements involve totals, that they do not provide detail. The details are always in the accounts and working papers of the client (City of Abbotsford) and the auditors working paper file.

Knowing city council spent the budget money does not really tell citizens anything useful. What citizens need to know is how and on what the money was spent, compared to how the money was budgeted to be spent and explanations for variances.

That way we can evaluate our budgeting process and inquire about monies not spent as budgeted.

Financial Statements do not provide the detail for citizens to understand how the city actually spent its money. The budget is council reporting to citizens how they are going to spend taxpayers dollars. Taxpayers in Abbotsford currently have no solid understanding of how their tax dollars are spent.

Abbotsford needs to make available to the public details of the budget, a comparison of budget to the actual amounts spent and explanations for variances. In that way citizens can gain knowledge of how the money is actually being spent, evaluate the budgeting process and get explanations for why it was not spent as budgeted.

Currently there is the distinct possibility of council budgeting money to be spent in one manner and spending it on different projects and operations.

We need financial transparency to evaluate the financial performance and stewardship of council and city management.

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The original question asked was about operational audits which are different from financial statement audits. Actually since we are speaking of a municipality the correct term is performance audit since operational audits refer to business operations.

Making the switch away from the question of an operational audit to financial statement audits is hardly a surprising action from current council and its cloak of secrecy. It allowed the councillor to avoid the question of the effectiveness or the efficiency of the way the City of Abbotsford operates and airily suggest to taxpayers – don’t worry, be happy we have audited financial statements.

Here are definitions for both operational and performance auditing:

Operational Audit is a structured review of the systems and procedures of an organization in order to evaluate whether they are being conducted efficiently and effectively. An operational audit involves establishing performance objectives, agreeing the standards and criteria for assessment, and evaluating actual performance against targeted performance.

Performance audits are the public sector version of “Operational Audits” that are conducted to determine if an entity’s operations, programs, or projects are run effectively and efficiently.

An objective and systematic examination of evidence for the purpose of providing an independent assessment of the performance of a government organization, program, activity, or function in order to provide information to improve public accountability and facilitate decision-making by parties with responsibility to oversee or initiate corrective action.

A performance audit has two parts: (1) an economy and efficiency review, and (2) a program review. The economy and efficiency review determines if resources have been used efficiently. The program review, on the other hand, determines whether the resources were used effectively, that is, for the purpose intended by the grantor of resources. Thus, the two reviews complement each other in providing a complete picture of an agency’s performance.

It is no wonder city council wants to avoid the topic of performance audits with their value for money facet.

Take the Centennial Pool tank fiasco. A performance review of whether the money was spent efficiently and whether the money used effectively would require looking at what the total actual costs were (a piece of information currently denied the citizens) and the fact and effect of the pool opening three months behind schedule.

What do you think a performance audit would have to say about Plan A?

No, it is hardly surprising that city council wants to avoid performance audits in light of their performance.

I have had several people ask me about where my signs are and have found myself explaining why I will not raise money for signs.

I will not be raising or asking for money for signs, cards, pamphlets, campaign offices etc. Not because I could not raise funds, turns out I have a lot of friends on this matter, but because I know so many better uses for monies raised than to spend them on politicking.

The demand on our local food bank is growing while at the same time the economy has resulted in decreased donations for the food banks. Compounding this is that we are heading into the Christmas season when demand soars, followed by the bleak days for donations of January and February 2009.

People are going cold, wet and hungry – how could I raise money and spend it on politics?

People have said “think of all the good you could do if elected”. You start justifying you actions or thinking like that and it has become about you and you have decided to be a politician rather than a leader.

I have written several times over the past months to remind people to remember the food banks (thanks to the local papers for printing those letters). How could I not follow my own pleas and remember the food bank?

Being on council is also about priorities and leadership and I believe that if getting on council is your overriding priority, your priorities are wrong. A thought echoed by one homeless gentleman who felt he had to come up and urge me to not become a politician but to remain true to my self and remember the people.

So I cannot, will not raise money for signs.

Besides I do have a few.

A decal sign from a friend who had his brother cut decals for his vehicle and my car as well as some legal size signs I printed off of my computer. Some friends are threatening to paint up some signs which is fine, I can only hope they get the spelling right. One or two friends are insisting I need at least a few signs and insisting on getting at least some put up. Then there are those who are printing up their own signs from their computer as did I.

As my homeless acquaintance said I have to remain true to my self … which brings me to the question of whether you have remembered the food bank recently?

From: Country 107.1

“please email brief answers to …”

1) What qualifies you for this position? (ie. qualifications, experience)
2) Briefly, what are the main issues that need to be dealt with in this community?
3) What do you hope to accomplish in your first year as councillor?
What qualifies you for this position? (ie. qualifications, experience)

I have lived in Abbotsford for twenty years and am actively engaged in the community as a volunteer (and was a volunteer while I was homeless), as a member of boards and committees, campaigned against Plan A and in the political debate about what is going on in Abbotsford.

With a Bachelor of Commerce, having been a Chartered Accountant and having worked in public practice and business I have solid management and financial experience.

Having lived homeless on the streets of Abbotsford I have uniquely specialized knowledge of homelessness, addiction, mental illness and poverty and what needs to be done to address these major social challenges.

I am a writer, a blogger and a firm believer people have the right to know what council is doing without filing Freedom of Information requests. I listen and am completely happy to get and use good ideas from others.

Briefly, what are the main issues that need to be dealt with in this community?

– Openness and transparency with far less business being conducted behind closed doors and information denied the public.

– Waste treatment and water treatment infrastructure.

– social issues of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, the working poor and poverty.

– cleaning up the financial fallout from Plan A and the mess the city’s finances are in.

– contracts need to be awarded to the best bid, not the lowest bid that always ends up costing us far more than the highest bid would have; capital spending plan; the city designs what we want built and has a contractor build it rather than handing a pile of money to a contractor and saying build us an arena for $xxx and we do not know what we are buying until the building is turned over to the city.

– changing the attitudes and behaviours at city hall so that the city becomes can do, taxpayer and business friendly, and work is done to attract businesses we want to our city.

What do you hope to accomplish in your first year as councillor

– engage the citizens in affairs of the city and keep them informed on what is going on at city hall by blogging on www.jameswbreckenridge.ca.

– reduce the number of council meetings held behind closed doors and increase the information citizens are given about council and city’s decisions and activities

– provide leadership on addressing the social issues of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, the working poor and poverty. Engage the public and community in addressing these issues.

– open up the budgeting process to public input, scrutiny and knowledge of the budget details; provide a comparison of budget versus how the money was actually spent for the current fiscal year with the city’s financial statements

– resolve the crematorium issue.

– provide insight, support and leadership to getting the BC Housing and Social Development funding for two housing developments under construction and secure funding for more of the badly needed mixture of housing – supportive, safe and affordable – needed in our community.

*please note that the original letter is posted at the end of my comments.

“What good is building something if no one wants to use it, or the location is not appropriate?” You are quite right it isn’t any good and the location is vital to the “success” of the housing.

At the Chamber of Commerce all-candidates meeting some candidates spoke of sticking housing at the edge of the city or out into the country. Miracle Valley (a treatment facility) is located a considerable distance from Mission but this has not stopped people, including some I have known, from walking away from treatment, housing and the three meals a day into Mission.

Building homeless housing on the outskirts of Abbotsford or further out in the countryside when that is not where they want to be and far from the services they need to access is really a waste of money – they will just walk away and we will not have accomplished anything effective in dealing with this issue. But these type of statement do make good political sound-bites.

On the question of consulting with the homeless, I would say that they have been consulted in the most meaningful and effective of ways. Many types housing have been built and the homeless have had the chance to evaluate and effectively vote on the housing through their behaviour.

I think that the behaviour of the homeless and the outcomes that result from the different types of housing is the best way to evaluate the type of housing we should be building. We are not building housing in a vacuum, but have the benefit of being able to look around and see what works and what the best practices are.

“And while everyone bickers about it, the people that really need a place to stay out of the weather and some food to eat will go without for another bitter winter.” Sadly this is so true.

It is not just that we need to take little steps – we need to take the first step.

There is that old saying about the journey of a thousand miles beginning with the first step. We have allowed homelessness and affordable housing to grow into a thousand mile journey, a journey that grows long as we dither about what first step to take.

We need a spectrum of housing built to meet a variety of housing needs of a very diverse group of people in need of safe, healthy housing they can afford.

The Gage Tower dorms at UBC you describe sound very much like the upstairs units at the Salvation Army which I thought was a good design when I was living there for the “first stage” housing it was being used for.

Again location is important. I had not thought of it myself but as several residents shared with me (input from those using the housing) the location was not good. Every time they went out they were in and had to run the gauntlet of a sea of people still in their addiction.

When people come out of Kinghaven or other treatment places they need to go into safe housing that is located away from drugs and people still in their addiction. Otherwise we are just setting them up to relapse into addiction and homelessness.

My experience and the experience and feedback from others in the housing at the Salvation Army convinced me that support, solid proactive support and supportive people is the key to having people coming out of treatment and into this type of first stage housing continue to recover and stay in recovery.

Let me say that here is one of the points why I think it is so important to truly listen to what people are saying. As I said I think this housing is very good for this type of first stage housing. My problem was always what you are going to do with it when the demand for this housing decreases.

My operating intention is to build the housing, support and services needed to get people into recovery and wellness and off the current cycles of treatment and relapse. We will never achieve a 100% but we can get up into the 80 – 90+% range, which means that at some point we have a decreasing number of people needing this housing. Leaving the question of what do you do with the unneeded living spaces?

Duh! Student housing or some other housing use I am sure someone knows of or can think of. A councillor does not have to try to solve all this himself. He just has to be willing to talk about the issue, ask for peoples thoughts and listen to what people say.

Actually, thinking about it, there are positive (and admittedly some negative – which we can address) aspects of having UFV students in some of the housing units with people working on their recovery and wellness.

However, this type of housing is not suitable for people still in their addiction or mental illness. They do not play nicely together and with multiple people sharing a common space a great deal of conflict and probably violence will erupt.

And that is why is why neither KInghaven nor the Salvation Army is able to deal with this housing. The Salvation Army only runs “dry” housing while minimal barrier housing houses people still in their addiction. Similarly Kinghaven is about

During the homeless count I was filling out survey forms for some people I knew had been roommates. When asked the question “what kind of housing do you need?” they all said something they could afford on their own without a roommate.

From all of their own viewpoints they were good roommates, the other guy was the roommate from H*ll. Knowing the people involved I knew that they had been roommates, each insisting they were a good roommate and the other person a terrible roommate.

I think one of the realities of housing those still in their addiction or mental illness is they each need their own private space; whether it be a room with its own bathroom or a small bachelor suite.

In Vancouver the provincial government has been purchasing the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels and giving them to various housing organizations within Vancouver together with the funds to renovate the buildings and staff them adequately.

We need housing along these lines for minimal barrier housing for the addicts and mentally ill. It have been demonstrate time and again that if you house people they will be ready to move into treatment faster than if you left them on the street.

Support gets people into treatment and is needed to help them get into recovery and discover wellness.

Finally, remember that there is a spectrum of housing needed in Abbotsford, not just for those with mental health and/or addiction issues. The funding is up to $22 million, the high dollar figure to allow flexibility in the proposals the government has asked for. Especially in the area of what else may be proposed to include in buildings.

The street homeless are just the most visible of those in need of housing that is safe and that they can afford; the need in Abbotsford is both wider and deeper than most people recognize.

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Hi James,

I am the fellow who came to your table at the All Candidates Forum last Thursday. I wanted to meet you and congratulate you on running for council and the fine work you have been doing keeping “the homelessness issue” in the public eye. I have long been mystified that you have not been offered a column in one of the local papers.

I noticed in all this “kafluffle” that no one has bothered to consult with “the homeless” to find out what kind of accomodations they would find suitable. What good is building something if no one wants to use it, or the location is not appropiate? And while everyone bickers about it, the people that really need a place to stay out of the weather and some food to eat will go without for another bitter winter.

If people are to proceed with change, little steps are required and they need to be built upon. $20 million for two buildings to house 50 units each?! That works out to $200,000 per unit, sure they will have some other fascilities in the building, still $150,000 can buy a townhouse in Abbotsford and we have over 400 homeless people, how come so few units? We need to provide the existing support groups, the Salvation Army, Kinghaven and others with enough money to give these people refuge first, so they can determine where they need to go next, a little step.

How much space does a person require when they are trying to get off the street? I have stayed in the Gage Tower dorms at UBC and it would have been great to live there when I was going to school and single, but demand was too high. Each module comfortably houses six students in about the same space as a large apartment. These dorms have private rooms with a bed, built-in desk and cabinets, shelves for books and a closet. They open onto a shared common room that includes a living/social area with T.V. and kitchenette, with a large, stalled bathroom and showers. That could house about 300 people per building, another step.

I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth and I may be mistaken, but I noticed no similar offer to Vancouver, Surrey or Langley; is it Campbell’s plan to move more people out of Vancouver and into Abbotsford before the Olympic Games? Every government dime comes with a cost; we can spend $20 million and not affect the lives of the homeless people on our streets one iota.

Thank you,

Steve Fult

It sounds so easy and makes for great political sound-bites: all we need to do to solve our crime is get tough on the criminals and lock them up.

The questions are where are we supposed to lock them up and what price are we willing to pay?

Go on line as I did and you will find that our prisons are full, many of them overfull. There is no place to lock all the criminals in our country up.

The reason that the criminals who are stealing our stuff are not locked up for long sentences is that it is judged more important to focus on locking up those criminals who were a threat to do bodily harm to us, rather than to focus on those criminals who were threat to our stuff.

Personally I would rather have the criminals taking my stuff and the stuff of others rather than inflicting bodily harm on myself and others. Stuff can be replaced, people can’t.

If you want to start tossing property criminals in jail tomorrow – which murders, rapists etc, do you propose to leave or put on the streets, just so you stuff is safe?

Building more prisons will require years and billions of dollars, not to mention operating costs.

It seems far more sensible and a far better use of our taxpayer dollars to address the core of the problem, rather than allowing the problems to continue to fester and grow while we build more prisons and throw an ever increasing number of people into prison.

Much of the property crime is fuelled by the need to buy drugs. You eliminate the need to purchase drugs by getting people into recovery and wellness, you eliminate the associated property crime.

We can spend our billions locking people up, until they get out and go back to criminal activities. Or we could invest our billions in housing and the support services required to bring about rehab, recovery and wellness. We can accomplish rehab, recovery and wellness because it is being done in jurisdictions that want to get off the merry-go-round of increasing crime and who have chosen to decrease crime by addressing the core of the problems and issues.

This approached does not make for good sound-bites; it is not simple and fast or neat and tidy or what people want to hear; but it is the approach that that will work, that will in fact reduce not only property crime but the overall cost to taxpayers.