Cash Handling Source Material

June 4 2010, from James Yu, assistant to Recreation Manager Kelvin Seow

This is to confirm the meeting between the Internal Auditor staff, Anila Lalani and Dufferin Grove staff at Dufferin Grove on Wednesday, June 9, from 1:00 - 3:00 pm. Thank you.

Jul 7, 2010, e-mail from Anila Lalani, Senior Internal Auditor, City of Toronto Internal Audit Division:

I am back from my vacation and would like to visit Dufferin Grove next week to observe cash handling procedures. Could you please send me the list of scheduled activities and its duration for my planning purposes.

July 13, 2010, e-mail from Mayssan Shuja-Uddin, part-time staff coordinator, Dufferin Grove Park

Welcome back and apologies for the delay, I've been our of town the last few days. This week at the park we have a food cart by the pool from 12 pm to 4pm, we have a snack bar table and a bread selling table at the farmer's market on Thursday from 3-7pm, and we have a Friday night supper scheduled from 6-7pm. Judging by the weather, Thursday might be the best option, if you wanted to come down for 3pm you could see the end of the food cart and the start of the market.

I can send you a more comprehensive list of activities, but this is a start at least.

Feel free to contact me before coming down, should there be rain, a smog alert, etc... there's some stuff that prevent us from running programs. Otherwise, I can connect you with the coordinator of the day.

July 13, 2010, from Anila Lalani

Thanks Mayssan for your response. This sounds like a good plan. I will be there this Thursday @ 3 p.m.

Jutta, Would you be able to PDF General Ledger from Quick Books for me and send it to me electronically? This would enable me to select samples for verification.

July 14, 2010, from Jutta Mason, administrator of CELOS

Here is the excel version. The pdf one comes out so badly formatted that I must be making some mistake, so I scrapped it.

The Quickbooks categories we put in when we began using this program no longer work well for us, as you can see. My hope is that you can help us disentangle the various food programs from the rest, and make the categories as simple as we can. I think it would be good to begin with the two summer snack bar operations, and I'd like to set up a new Quickbooks file (program?) on August 1 for those, to make a start.

I'll be back and forth, out of town and back, quite a bit for the next two weeks. My northern phone number is [....] I have limited access to e-mail (but some). If you want to set up a time to meet and go over accounts, give me a few dates and I can come into town.

July 19, 2010, from Anila Lalani

My apology for a delayed response and thanks for the GL. I would also like to get a GL for 2009 and need to sit with you to get some understanding of various categories in here. My preference would be Wednesday or Friday next week as I am planning to be there to observe Pizza Day and Friday Supper. In case any of these days does not work well for you, please let me know your availability and I will try and make my schedule flexible.

July 19 2010, from Jutta Mason

I'm leaving town again shortly, for the rest of the week, but will try to send you the 2009 GL before I go. Wednesday July 28 or Friday July 30 would both be possible for me, to meet, with Friday being the better day. I hope we'll have a few hours because we want to get as much out of it as possible -- we have lots of book-keeping questions for you.

July 19 2010, from Anila Lalani

Friday, July 30 is confirmed. My suggestion is to try to meet at 9:30 a.m. We will go through the GL first, followed by documents verification, Supper visit and closing of cash.

Let me know your thoughts.

July 21, 2010, from Jutta Mason

Sounds good. Here is the general ledger from 2009. I'll get in touch early next week, so that you can let me know which receipt bags you'd like me to bring.

July 21, 2010, from part-time park staff Matt Leitold

Mayssan asked me to forward you this information from the website:

Dufferin Grove food costs:

About food prices at the park:

The price list reflects how much money is needed to pay for the ingredients that went into the food, plus your donation toward park programs.

Half the suggested price is the ingredients cost, the other half is raising park funds. If you don't want to pay the "donation" part, just pay half.

On the other hand, if you find the park food very cheap and good and you feel like donating more, pay double, or whatever additional amount you choose. Every penny goes to the park.

And if there are days when you can't afford to pay even half, pay less, or nothing at all. You might want to help out with some work instead. Help wash dishes, water trees, shovel sand back into the sandpit, pick up all the litter. Help is much appreciated, and that goes for kids too.

If you help out a lot, you might find your money no longer works at Dufferin Grove, and you have to eat for free all the time.

A sign to this effect is also posted at the food cart, snack bar, pizza day and friday night supper (it's the sign we were chagrined to be unable to find at the food cart when you visited before...)

July 26, 2010, from Anila Lalani

Would that be Ok if I select three months (February, August and November) from 2009 for document verification. I guess you are filing supporting documents by month and each month bag would have all documents representing revenues and expenses recorded during the each of the month. Please let me know if my understanding is incorrect.

July 26, 2010, from Jutta Mason

Hi Anila, yes, you're right, the bags will contain all those little receipts and our count sheets and invoices as well.

When do you want them on Friday? At 9.30 a.m.?

I'm hoping that you can answer some questions about Quickbooks and help us set up a fresh version that will focus on the food and skate lending income (i.e. removing CELOS research grants and other research income which should be recorded in a different spot). The goal is to begin integrating the food/skate money with PFR, in August. We also just got some numbers from the City, re municipal spending at Dufferin Grove Park, and I hope you can help us figure out what they mean and how the food/skate money would fit into the city's categories.

Looking forward to some clarifications from you, including explaining what produces all those the minus signs in the GL version of Quickbooks!

July 28, 2010, from Anila Lalani

Just to confirm that I will be at Dufferin Grove on Friday, July 30, 2010 at 9:30 a.m. for verification of documents. Please have them available for my review.

You requested some help in your last e-mail on a number of matters, below is my response to each of the items:

1. With regard to your request for help in setting up a fresh version of GL in QuickBooks, I am not familiar with the setup requirements and would therefore suggest that you should either refer to its user manual (that generally comes with software purchase) or consult with an IT system person who can help you with its set-up.

2. Re: your goal to begin integrating the food/skate money with PF&R in August, my understanding is that this matter is pending subject to Council/Committee's direction. As such, I would not recommend taking any action prior to Council approval.

3. Re: explanation of municipal spending at Dufferin Grove Park, you will need to discuss with PF&R representative as I am not in a position to provide an explanation. I am sure Kelvin Seow would be able to assist in this regard or refer you to one of his staff.

4. Yes, I will be able to explain the minus signs in GL.

My responsibility as a staff person in the City's Internal Audit Division with regard to this assignment is to review the internal controls surrounding cash handling at Dufferin Grove. I hope this clarifies my position with regard to the work I have been assigned to do in the Recreation Unit of PF&R and I thank you for your understanding in this regard.

I look forward to seeing you on Friday.

July 29 2010, from Jutta Mason

Your most recent email was rather discouraging. We may be able to clarify it in person, but I also want to respond in writing, for the public record.

Your e-mail explains that your mandate is to simply review the CELOS books and receipts, not help in the ways I've requested. Sadly, I guess that means that after three years (see the attachment of the letter to former director Don Boyle), our most recent attempt to engage the city in adapting current cash-handling arrangements has not resulted in a dialogue this time either.

I therefore invite you to review the material at the CELOS office instead of at the park. I'll have a desk cleared for you to spread out what you need. CELOS is of course under no obligation to be audited by a City internal auditor, but transparency is our hobby, so I will supply you with the documents you've requested. Your working here will allow me to continue with my own work but be available for clarifications, if you should want them.

Your letter advises us to wait long beyond August to begin the next step -- that may not be possible. Our charitable purposes are these: http://celos.ca/wiki/wiki.php?n=CELOS.AboutCELOS. Both the food and the skate lending programs are experiments conducted collaboratively. Therefore we've given contracts to others to help in this effort (involving part-time city staff as much as possible, so they can build inside knowledge that won't get lost).

But CELOS can't exceed our mandate by running day-to-day programs over the long term. We experiment to see if specific programs are useful to park users and feasible for city workers to run. As I've made clear in e-mails and the newsletter over the past year, we consider the food programs/skate lending experiment pretty well complete. It's been challenging work -- and a very popular project. What remains is to work out a way for the city to integrate the rest of what CELOS at this point still contributes to these programs. That's a very interesting challenge which needs careful thought and some experimentation. (And -- as I had hoped, and requested -- help from PFR financial staff who can collaborate in working through the details.)

Of course, the City can decline to build on our efforts, and cancel what's developed at Dufferin Grove. But it cannot require us to go beyond our research mandate and run a food or skate-lending agency.

Let's discuss this in person on Friday.

July 29, 2010, from Ruvani Shaubel, Director, Internal Audit, City of Toronto

Ms. Mason; I am in receipt of your mail to my staff Anila Lalani. I would be more than happy to meet with you tomorrow at the City's premises at Dufferin Grove CC. at 9:30 am to discuss your concerns and my mandate at the City. Thank you.

July 29 1010, from Jutta Mason to Ruvani Shaubel

I'd like that a lot, I appreciate your willingness to talk about this. See you at Dufferin Grove at 9.30.

August 3 2010, from Jutta Mason to Anila Lalani

I want to make sure my meeting summary (below) doesn't leave out anything important from last Friday. I intend to send my letter to Brenda Patterson on Wednesday August 4, so could you have a look and see if this all sounds right?

At the meeting, Internal Audit Director Ruvani Shaubel explained that Recreation Director Malcolm Bromley had asked the Internal Audit Division to do an internal audit of Dufferin Grove Park cash handling and report back to him. So your mandate was never to help staff or CELOS to adapt the cash handling. Ms.Shaubel also explained that her staff cannot go to a home office and examine documents there -- their job is to audit City finances and related issues on City property.

CELOS office

I explained that CELOS, in collaboration with part-time city recreation staff, has been asking City management for three years (letter of August 2007) to help address the park cash-handling issues around food and skate lending. Mayssan and Anna also explained that in February 2009, Dufferin Grove staff and CELOS were asked by acting Recreation manager Lucky Boothe to develop a cash handling report that could work at Dufferin Grove. This report was submitted on March 19 2009 but had no response. Our most recent request to PF&R was in April 2010. When Kelvin Seow invited you to a meeting at the park on June 9, we hoped that this was the first step to incorporating the successful food and skate lending programs into Recreation. I believe you may have tried to set us straight at that meeting and we misunderstood you.

Your e-mail of July 29 2010 was very clear about the limits of your mandate, and so was the message we got from you and your director on July 30. As you see from the photo above, our receipts are ready for verification of the Quickbooks entries, but before we continue I need some clarity from Ms.Patterson about her willingness to foster good-faith collaboration.

Your director posed the question "can Toronto be a city of one-offs?" That question is the kernel of what needs to be discussed, regarding a local versus centralized approach to public space. The meeting on July 30 was very helpful to us, and we hope to return to a discussion with you in the near future. We intend to keep you copied on our correspondence in the meantime.