PERIOD REPORT
DATE: May 17, 2018 Report No. FIN-18-010
TO: Laurie Hurst, Chief Administrative Officer
FROM: Ian Irvine, Director of Financial Services
SUBJECT:TITLEFinancial Services and Information Technology Departments - 2018 First Period Report
Body
The following is a report on the activities pertaining to the Financial Services and Information Technology Departments from January 1, 2018 to April 30, 2018.
I. DIVISION ACHIEVEMENTS AND ACTIVITIES
1. Budgeting, Financial Reporting and Accounting Operations
• Drafting of the 2018-2022 Financial Plan involved the compilation of departmental submissions, discussions with senior management and formalization of recommendations for Council consideration.
• Various budget presentations made to Council which provided an overview, a summary of challenges and proposed updates to the policies and objectives document. The draft Financial Plan and a range of tax rate scenarios were drafted in anticipation of adoption in early May.
• Provided year end reconciliations and draft financial statements to the Township’s auditors for their review, testing and issuance of an audit opinion.
• Entered the second year of a two year commitment with AON as the Township’s property insurance provider. This agreement represents a 3% increase over the 2017 amount due in part to the inclusion of a full year’s premium for the water park in 2018.
2. Risk Management
• Attended the Risk Management Conference in Vancouver hosted by the Municipal Insurance Association. The conference included numerous presentations and provided useful information about contract risk, business continuity and risk management pertaining to engineering structures and recreation facilities.
• There are no new significant or unusual liability claims with the Municipal Insurance Association.
3. Information Technology
• Staff cleared a total of 309 logged assistance calls received from Township staff. This represents almost a 10% reduction in the number of calls received during the first period in 2017.
• Procured new infrastructure which will combine server and storage technologies and will increase the availability of our systems in the event of component failure while reducing the amount of staff time spent performing maintenance.
• New wireless access point evaluations were completed in order to improve the reliability of internal connections and public internet access within our facilities.
• Integration of the recreation centre gate kickers with the PerfectMIND system to provide improved access to the facility. This will result in more accurate revenue being recorded and will reduce the amount of recreation staff time required to control access.
II. COMMITTEES
The Local Grant Committee met in February to review all 2018 local grant funding applications. The Committee’s recommendations were approved by Council later that month and the total approved amount was included in the adopted 2018-2022 Financial Plan.