The Office of the Washington State Auditors Exit Conference, presented by Finance Director, Angela Folkers, reported a “clean” audit. But the audit confirmed the city is NOT receiving monthly financial reports from the OS Golf Course, as the lease requires. The presentation seemed to fault the complaints of multiple citizens for “additional audit costs”…but don’t citizens have a right to see how their city and its various assets and functions are being run? The citizens did, more or less, win a battle: as a result of their diligence, Curt Zander, who has been blowing off reports for years, will now have to make them monthly…as the lease requires.
Here are some of the slides from today’s Zoom meeting (anyone else have trouble hearing anything on the meeting?):
The North Beach News 
The audit cost 50k for nothing
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Exactly who are the citizens of Ocean Shores that wanted this? They should foot the bill
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No smoking gun, but it sounds like the editor of the North Course News isn’t happy about that.
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North Beach News
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Sounds like they gloss over a lot of issues. If you are a good ax paying resident of OS you should be upset as well.
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It appears to me that the city and Mr Zander bear equal responsibility for the lack of reporting; one doesn’t insist and the other doesn’t produce. I wonder how much value monthly reports really have, would not twice yearly serve the purpose as well and save both sides some time? The contract could easily be amended to reflect that. The most bothersome part of the audit, at least to me, is the strong inference that citizen concerns are trivial and just cost money for no good reason. While I question the 50k cost figure of auditing just the golf course portion, I have an issue with public employees who trivialize the legitimate concerns of those who pay the bills, including their salaries. While the golf course has been a political football recently that does not mean that there have not been legitimate concerns brought up. Apparently some of those concerns have been found to lack sufficient validity to reach a “finding” level, some of them have led to management actions. In no way do those concerns found to lack sufficiency equate to being less than legitimate concerns. Sadly, Ocean Shores has for quite a few years operated in less than a transparent manner. If this changes, maybe the need for lodging complaints or concerns with the state auditor will diminish. That could save both money and heartburn. We shall see what, if anything, changes.
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I’d like to see the actual names of those “citizen referrals” against the golf course. I think if those names were made public one could readily determine if these referrals were warranted or just individuals that continue to attack the golf course and its operator. I suspect that one or two of these individuals were also involved in the initiation and release of the Rebound Report and released it on social media. The additional $50k cost is money that could be better spent on more important issues. Monthly reports from the golf course are ridiculous, since the winter weather reduces revenue drastically. I agree with Peter Jordan that semi annual reports should be sufficient with an annual report to the City Council. Hopefully the lease can be amended to reflect these changes if agreed upon by both parties. I am confident that both parties have always agreed on compliance with lease requirements regardless if reports were provided timely or not. Hopefully, we can finally put this issue to bed and tackle other issues such as public safety, emergency services and medical care availability in our City.
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You want names, anonymously. You just broke my irony meter.
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You want the names of those of us who have major concerns about how this has been handled for years but you post anonymously? Ok bad ass keyboard warrior. You comment holds no water. Is your name Curt or Paula? Yes I know I did not provide my name, this is due to you being a total wack job.
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