February 13, 2025

Commissioner Jabbour

Unfortunately, we had an accidental fire here in Tonopah at the apartments just across from the county complex. Four families currently are basically homeless, due to those fires destroying their dwellings in the apartment facility. A couple of animals took off for their lives so frightened that we did lose a couple of animals as well in the fire. So, these folks I’m going to ask, and I hope that the families are not offended or embarrassed in any way, but this is a time of need of food, clothing, blankets, shoes, monies to help with different things. Because everything, everything, February 13, 2025 3. CommissionerlManager Comments (This item is limited to announcements, brief discussions of public comments, correction of factual inaccuracies, direction to staff, or topics proposed for future board meetings. Lengthy deliberation of topics not on the agenda is prohibited by the Nevada Open Meeting Law). Cont... was lost in this unfortunate incident of the fire. I don’t have any information as far as where to send if anybody is listening, anybody there anybody here is able to help and assist these families in any way. There are children involved as well. So, don’t misunderstand; I hate to start off in a negative and sad way, but this is first and foremost for this community, and part of Nye County. As our neighbors to help and assist in any way that we’re able if we’re able and I thank you No comments for Commissioner Strickland, Commissioner Koenig and Commissioner Bayne.

Commissioner Boskovich

I have heard a couple of comments that people were potentially offended or bothered by the fact that occasionally I will reach out to vice chair or Commissioner Koenig or Commissioner Jabbour for you know procedural advice on how we’re doing these. This is my, I believe, third one, but it certainly is something that we work as a team here. And that’s what we all do, staff and us up here. So, I appreciate any of the help that I receive and always will. So, that’s all I have Manager Waggoner- Question for Commissioner Jabbour. If he knows if Red Cross has been in contact with those people because I do know they were notified immediately.

Commissioner Jabbour

yes, yes, they were manager. They were notified and they’ve issued to my knowledge some type of debit card for food and drink. So, they’re not totally stranded and abandoned. So, they did step up thank you

Commissioner Strickland-be

aware that this has been an ongoing project all year long. And what this was a brief overview that was given about what’s going to be reported to the department of taxation. But each one of these commissioners was briefed in depth with Dan MacArthur, Helen Bae, and we have an absolute understanding what we’ve got in front of us is good work. It’s accurate work and it took a lot of time to get it done. And I appreciate so very much our finance department for making this happen because it was very questionable about what we started with and how the team had to spend so very much time getting this done. So good work, thank you, everybody.

Commissioner Jabbour

Questions. One at a time is for Mr. Dan McArthur. Dan, thank you for the presentation. Very professional and thorough. I appreciate you and your team. Since I’ve been commissioner, and you mentioned it, you scratched the surface today with cooperation from management and the finance comptroller and comptroller’s office. However, over the years you’ve given us recommendations and my question to you, Sir, have those recommendations all been followed up on, prioritized? Are there any that are still left out there that need to be addressed? That may have fallen by the wayside. Because of, specifically, there’s change in Commission, change in county management, change in the comptroller’s office etcetera. And I know that you are the common constant denominator coming before us and giving us your report. So that’s my first question Sir. Dan McArthur- the 2 areas I have concern about, I actually have put in the report. The issue with the capital assets. That has carried on for multiple years and I think emphasis should be placed on that. I know there’s a law on the plate and the comptroller’s office right now. The statute indicates the commissioners designate who that individual is or who’s responsible for that. We have discussed that in several of our meetings when we’ve had planning concerning this on how to deal with the capital asset listing. That probably needs the most work and the most time put towards that inside this report. And the issue with the month ends close, I still think that needs some constant work as well. And the reason it’s in the report is because we still see the issue existing even though there’s been some corrective action. There still needs to be some continued work to get it to the point where information is as current as possible each month so that everyone managing their departments as well as the commissioners have some very current numbers at all times to be able to make decisions concerning operation of the county. It also helps with the budget process as well. So, to answer your question Commissioner Jabbour, those are the two that are most consequential to me that I did put in the report. Having things timely inside the comptroller’s office will help so that there aren’t any future budget violations. It helps so you can see some of those numbers quicker and make decisions. one of the issues with the Nevada Revised Statutes is that it doesn’t February 13, 2025 6 For Possible Action Discussion and deliberation to approve the Fiscal Year 2023-2024 audits for Nye County and all component units of Nye County, conducted by Daniel McArthur, LTD. Pursuant to NRS 354.624. Cont. allow you after the end of the year with the exception of what’s called an enterprise fund, which would be like the Pahrump golf course, you can’t fix those budget violations. They have to be fixed inside of basically a meeting with the County Commission by June 30th of each year. And so being able to stay upon accounts payable, looking at what remaining purchase orders might be open that’s a difficult thing to do. And so, the more that month end the more likely it’ll be that there won’t be budget violations. Even though we do see them in many places where everything is current too. Sometimes it’s just hard to know if expenditure shows up. You just didn’t anticipate but that would help control the budget violations more.

Commissioner Jabbour

OK I thank you for that; Chari, would it be appropriate at this time to request staff to put on the agenda in the future the capital asset inventory issue as well as the golf course issue.

Commissioner Boskovich

absolutely. Helen Bae I just wanted to add that we’ll be going over. The next agenda item is to go over how we will plan to address those deficiencies and weaknesses pointed out in the audit report so we can go into more detail with that.

Commissioner Strickland

chair if I may, and that’s based on a correction letter that we’ll follow this. It goes to the department of taxation so we can get really in-depth at that point on that, and we do have some ideas, right Helen? Thank you, chair.

Commissioner Bayne

I have a very critical eye as most people know, and I met with both the finance and the auditor. I found that very straightforward. I have looked at these, we all have, as Commissioner Strickland said, met with everyone out there about these documents. Obviously, it’s a giant book and no one knows all this stuff up here but everything that I’ve found has made sense. There’s a lot of rules that whether they’re fair or not things that we aren’t in control of. So, if anyone is looking at this and trying to understand, it may take more understanding of law to understand it fully. So, I just wanted to say that I’m just in favor of the whole process. It’s been good. I haven’t seen anything that’s bad or confusing. Everything’s been pretty straightforward from my perspective. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

Commissioner Koenig

I would like to thank Dan one more time, again excellent job. As the next inventory control guy, I’ll be working with the comptroller to fix this problem we have with the physical inventory. And I’ve done thousands of them and counting nuts and bolts and pieces that go into machines and stuff there’s not much difference than counting fire trucks. So, we’ll get it fixed. We don’t want to see this in the next audit. That’s one of my goals now that you’ve pointed out. So, thank you again. You always do a great job, thank you. And I took the book home, and I read the whole thing wrong. February 13, 2025 6 For Possible Action Discussion and deliberation to approve the Fiscal Year 2023-2024 audits for Nye County and all component units of Nye County, conducted by Daniel McArthur, LTD. Pursuant to NRS 354.624. Cont...

Commissioner Boskovich

I just want to thank you also, it’s a very, very in-depth report and our pre-meetings, our 221 meetings that we had with you were super helpful. So, I really appreciate that. And with that I would entertain a motion.

Commissioner Strickland

motion to approve

Commissioner Koenig

second 5 yeas.

Comptroller Helen

Bae So the corrective action plan is typically due 60 days after the audit report. But, DTAX has requested us to be more proactive and submit it early. We are happy to oblige. We had been, as Commissioner Strickland stated, meeting for a year, every week, every Thursday at 2 pm. We met with the auditor, and there were a lot of great recommendations. I appreciate everything that is caught during the audit. I started off my career as an auditor for the Inspector General for the Department of Defense. I appreciate the function and the spirit of an audit and finding any control deficiency’s, violations of the law, pointing it out and improving the process. The repeat finding, the first is over internal controls. The reason for this control deficiency is because we have had a workforce shortage and turnover and the legacy processes and knowledge have been lost. We have made great strides in correcting these controls for our financial reporting. Especially in the area of accounts payable and recording transactions. We have hired three new managers. Finance oversees not just accounts payable but grants and contracts. Communication needs to happen to improve this process of closing accurately at month end. Capital asset inventory, we designated three staff members to oversee the inventory. Inventory property that is sensitive such as laptops and cell phones, those are items of value that also should be inventoried and tracked on a yearly basis, ideally. I know that the state requires every two years, but the volume of these items of value and fixed assets. It takes a lot of effort, and it takes a lot of hands on that to oversee and implement. And so, we will be rolling out a program where when it comes to physical inventory, we will be calling on all departments to participate in that invalidating and verifying that these assets are still in place and functioning. There has been a lot of cleaning up of our asset inventory, both high and low dollar. And that has taken up a lot of my staff’s time to actually get to a clean ledger to even audit. So, this year, fiscal year 2024, ever since this has come to light has been spent really cleaning up the sub ledger for our fixed assets. So, now we are ready to go out and do the physical inventory. As far as expenditures, in excess of appropriations February 13, 2025 7. For Possible Action Discussion and deliberation regarding the Corrective Action Letter for the Annual Audit Report for Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2024 to be submitted to the Nevada Department of Taxation pursuant to NRS 354.6245. Cont these budgetary violations do happen for the lack or deficiency in forecasting. And so, as Mr. McArthur mentioned financial close timely actually is critical to this process of monitoring spend and spend rates. And identify quickly, in time to make a budgetary adjustment to fill these deficiencies. And as far as golf course enterprise fund this will require more than just monitoring, this will require a talk and deliberation by the board about having adequate funding for the golf course. Because as it suggests we’re spending more than what we’re actually bringing in for this enterprise fund and normally we would be lucky to break even. But in order for that to happen we do need to look at our revenues and project better and make sure that this operation is funded correctly. And we would look into any cost-saving measures as well in conjunction with looking at the revenues. So, if you had any questions about those areas, we’d be happy to answer.

District Attorney Brian

Kunzi- unfortunately, the item had already been closed so it would be inappropriate to answer her question.

Commissioner Jabour-

I have a couple of questions for Comptroller. However, in the corrective action letter, it does scratch the surface but not in detail. We scratched the surface as to the capital assets inventory listing. I know that there is current number that has been established I know that the number may change I’m not I’m not even comfortable with the current number as it is. And if I can hone in, you did mention laptops and cell phones for example, well with the cost of laptops and cell phones with the current ceiling that we have established at $3000 some of these laptops most of these laptops and cell phones won’t even make the list. So again, if we’re considering, I’d like to know, when will we make that decision? Has that decision already been made? That the ceiling will be elevated to a different amount different than the $3000? If you can answer that because I have a proposal to be considered and if it’s not this meeting it’ll be at another meeting.

Comptroller Bae

So, we’re talking about two categories of what we call assets and so what’s on the books that are being depreciated, we do have a threshold of $3000 per February 13, 2025 7. For Possible Action Discussion and deliberation regarding the Corrective Action Letter for the Annual Audit Report for Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2024 to be submitted to the Nevada Department of Taxation pursuant to NRS 354.6245. Cont item to put it on our books and actually depreciate it over time. When we say items of value, typically cell phones and laptops, they will never be even $3000 each, but we still have statutorily through the NRS, there is a requirement that we must inventory those items. Even a value even below at $3000 threshold every two years. So, we’re tackling capital assets, those big items that are depreciated and that do get audited specifically. And then those items of value just for compliance reasons. So even if we were to raise our threshold to say $5000 that would relieve our fixed asset category of tracking, but it would not relieve those items of value category such as items that can actually walk out the door is how I understand it is if you can lift it up and actually walk out the door and go home with it such as cell phones laptops those items that actually those Wi-Fi items those mobile items tend to be sensitive and those should be tracked so we’re tackling those two areas. We will be coming to the Board to raise our capital threshold from $3000 which is the default if the state says that if we do not establish for ourselves the threshold then the default is $3000 that’s why it’s $3000 right now. But in other counties and it’s with the cost of capital items rising and ordinary items rising $3000 is in our opinion from financial perspective a little bit too low. So, we will be coming back in front of the Board to ask to raise that threshold to at least $5000 for per item cost of tangible items and then there is another threshold that we can set for capital improvements which also gets depreciated and captured onto our assets and on the books and that we would like to be raised to $50,000. But we can always talk about this and put this on the agenda as a separate item then we will be updating our financial management policy based on the decisions that the Board approves. 5102

Commissioner Jabbour

My next question to you is the golf course. I’m hoping it will also come before us in the future, this has been one of our biggest offenders financially and I spoke publicly as commissioner from the dais explaining that that we summoned this group this management group. And we are obligated to at least give them an opportunity and a chance to prove themselves, as they had stated they were successful through the nation running 40 plus golf courses in the black, only three in the red. And unfortunately, Pahrump’s golf course is one of those 3. So, I’m not satisfied with their performance and instead of being Big Brother and continually putting money, taxpayers’ dollars to the golf course I think there should be other options that we should consider and visit at this time.

Comptroller Bae-

So, this would be another item coming up, we do want to have this deliberation earlier hopefully before the April 8 meeting; we do have a budget workshop planned for that day, the majority of our budgetary funding changes and requests would come forth, but it could be brought earlier; have a lot of good recommendations coming in from the auditor and commissioners and the public and that would be the time to discuss all of that; and we will come up with a proposed financial plan and some options the board should consider to address the deficit situation for the golf course. February 13, 2025 7. For Possible Action Discussion and deliberation regarding the Corrective Action Letter for the Annual Audit Report for Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2024 to be submitted to the Nevada Department of Taxation pursuant to NRS 354.6245. Cont

Commissioner Boskovich

I just want to say regarding the golf course, he sat in on a lot of their advisory meetings and learned through this audit what they believed their costs were and what the county believed their costs are, was $100,000 different; definitely need to revisit that because we don’t need a $100,000.

Commissioner Strickland

motion to approve the letter

Commissioner Koenig

second 5 yeas.

Comptroller Bae-

I am sending my love back to my grants team Stephanie Urga and Blanca Segura and I have two, one of my new managers Miss Melissa Nixon, she’s our Diana replacement since Diana has been promoted to my assistant and so if you have any questions about invoicing and bills and payables and all things accounting, please reach out to Melissa out there. And yeah, I have a fantastic team. We may be young, and you know not in the team since maybe like three years or less, but we are learning a lot and are very motivated to improve and be more efficient and yeah, it’s really exciting. We’re going into our budget year and it’s going to be quite busy but I’m really glad for this day and I’m really happy. We have a great working relationship with Mr. Dan MacArthur and personally we have learned so much and I think because we’re sort of you know an early and young team that there’s a lot of things. We’re motivated and we’re ambitious to achieve as far as internal controls and just ramping up our efforts here, so thank you very much.

Commissioner Bayne

I don’t know, I’ll refer to the DA, if he would let me know. I have an observation that I did want to share at some point, some way, as far as the findings. I don’t think it was appropriate to discuss it in the audit, but it is sort of a future issue. So, I don’t know if that’s something I can bring up right now briefly or if it should be at a different time and if so, then I could issue with a private statement which I’m happy to do. But maybe at a future meeting if that’s more appropriate.

Commissioner Boskovich

The DA was shaking his head for right now, so it will be a future item.

Commissioner Boskovich

adjourned the meeting. APPROVED this day ATTEST: 2025. ‘r