City council has appointed chartered accountancy firm MNP LLP as the new auditor for the City of Moose Jaw for the next five years at the cost of $257,845.
During its Sept. 21 regular meeting, council unanimously approved awarding the request for proposal (RFP) submission for audit services to MNP for the fiscal years 2020 to 2024, and authorized the director of financial services to fulfill a service agreement with the company.
City hall issued an RFP for audit services in July, and after nominations closed on Aug. 14, the director of finance and city comptroller evaluated the three proposals from Deloitte, KPMG and MNP, a council report explained. The evaluating committee rated the MNP submission at 86.75 points since it brought the best value to the city, while it rated the Deloitte submission at 83.20 points and the KMPG submission at 69.45 points.
Moose Jaw’s current auditor is Deloitte LLP and has audited the municipality’s finances since 2015. Before that, Benson Trithardt Noren Professional Accountants were the auditors from 1985 to 2015. In 2015, the municipality adopted the practice of issuing an RFP at the end of each five-year audit term rather than extending the term of the existing auditor.
Entering into a five-year agreement with MNP will cost the city $257,845; the cost of the previous five-year audit contract was $249,160, the council report said. The new agreement represents an increase of 3.5 per cent over the actual costs paid for the previous five years.
Finance director Brian Acker told council that the selection committee chose MNP since it could perform the work required, had additional resources available, had a flexible schedule to perform the audit and had consistency with staffing.
The staffing criteria was important to the department, Acker explained, since it wanted an auditing firm where the same employees returned every year. This ensured finance officials didn’t have to provide the same answers to the same questions every time.
Conversely, the finance department had the municipality’s finances ready for evaluation by June, but Deloitte could not start analyzing the documents before July, which factored into the committee’s overall decision.
Coun. Brian Swanson expressed his appreciation for the scoring matrix included in the council report that explained why MNP was the successful recipient. He wondered why city administration had not provided a similar matrix in the report that discussed ticketing services at Mosaic Place.
City administration provided the matrix for the auditor because this is city council’s request for proposal, Acker explained. Council’s role is to appoint the auditor, so city administration thought including the scoring results was necessary.
“The provision of ticketing services is also up to council,” replied Swanson, adding scoring matrices should be included in future reports about RFP results as “part of transparency and accountability.”
The next regular council meeting is Monday, Oct. 5.
