Quote Originally Posted by Locke09 View Post
I'd love to see the report. I want to see how big and complex a $1.7 million dollar report is. I want to see if it contains any data and analysis that wasn't already available to anyone with access to the City's financial system. I want to see why it took an accounting firm 4 months and 1.7 million dollars to project the cash flow for a 12 month period. I want to see if that $1.7 million dollar report is worth the $1.7 million dollars they now have to cut the City agencies by [[and I know which one is being cut by that exact amount - and it's not Finance) in order to fund this unbudgeted expense.
$1.7MM is pretty much what it costs to hire a CPA firm to perform these kinds of services. And if you think that anyone with access to the city financial system could do this, it might be worth remembering that at one point less than 5 years ago, the city's accounting systems were so bloated and screwed up that there were over 100 individual checking accounts for various city departments held at banks all around the Metro Detroit area -- with no singular point of oversight.

Then add the complex relationships of the city municipal system, the DSWD, the school system, plus different subsets of employees [[both current and former) receiving different gradations of benefits...

Then, throw in all the different bond issues and liens/guarantors...

The report is not worth $1.7MM. It's not like the words are printed onto platinum-bound books of pages made of super-fine goldplating with sprinkles of saffron embedded into the binding.

The $1.7MM is what it costs to pay people to unravel this disastrous mess.