Public Commons

• Scott Verdin: Finance Supervisor from Financial Reporting and Accounts Receivable

Part of 2014

From: Jutta Mason <juttamason@gmail.com> Date: Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 4:07 PM Subject: 2013/2014 Dufferin Grove Park food/skate-lending income and expenses To: sverdin@toronto.ca Cc: Denise Stuckless <dstuckl@toronto.ca>

Dear Mr.Verdin,

I have just received the final batch of financial material that I requested from Corporate Access back in April. Denise Stuckless gave me your name for clarifications. I see from the PFR staff directory that you are the division's finance supervisor, so I hope you can help resolve certain confusions in the material.

In the September Dufferin Grove Park newsletter, I wrote that between the material I got from Stephen Graham and from FOI, we now have four versions of the Dufferin Grove 2013 finances in total, none matching. The most recent spreadsheets make that five non-matching versions.

On August 26, 2014, Ms.Stuckless forwarded an income summary for 2013 totalling $150,416. The most recent spreadsheet gives a total income of $155,325 for 2013. Three of the categories (snack bar, bake-oven bread, pizza day) match the earlier document and the other four don't. Besides this, the spreadsheet is actually incomplete -- two weeks in early March are missing ($4729.14 by our calculation, presumably never entered) -- and what I assume is petty cash ($4059.20 in red on the spreadsheet) is deducted from income before totalling -- which means the actual income is higher.

The expenditures material I received seems to leave out both gift cards and petty cash used at Dufferin Grove to locally buy some of the groceries that earn the income.

Earlier 2013 versions show duplicate entries as well as income that seems to be listed as expenses . e.g. identical P Card entries are listed twice, in June and July

The recent spreadsheet for the first three months of 2014 gives the total of "other recoveries" -- i.e. food and skate income -- as $36,190.68 while the SAP Sheet or the same period I got in April from Mr.Graham gives the total as $39,661.35. The 2014 Jan-March expense list is both confusing and still missing petty cash and gift cards expenditure.

The city's soon-to-be $70 million FPARS program is meant to be both more reliable and more transparent for councillors and the public, as well as for city staff. But it seems to me that the example of Dufferin Grove shows that something is not working -- and we may not be the only example. It may be that locally responsive projects like Dufferin Grove need a slightly modified approach to book-keeping and transparency.

May I come and see you, to go through these contradictory numbers and think about how they can become more reliable?

Jutta Mason

Questions re: FOI: Scott Verdin

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