A total of $79,000 has been spent on spotting and fixing council financial problems according to Mayor Michael Laws. Mr Laws said in a press release that a independent audit into the Wanganui District Council's finances and debt levels, conducted by local government consultant and accountant Larry Mitchell, and commissioned bythe current council, cost $44,012 plus GST. Mr Laws said the information as being made public after an Official Information Act request from a Wanganui person for the figures. When combined with the additional $35,000 charged by Audit New Zealand to audit the 2003/04 Annual Report, a total of $79,000 has been spent on identifying and rectifying financial management issues within the Council, Mr Laws said. He said the $70,000-plus figure was an unacceptably large sum of money but a legacy of the past council's failure of governance. "That's $79,000 I would have liked to have spent upon either civic amenities or reducing the rates burden." Mr Laws said that the council-commissioned independent audit, which the Council unanimously agreed to in November 2004, had been worth every dollar and materially assisted the Council during its Annual Plan deliberations. It had also led to improvements within the Council around the issue of financial accountability and he was certain that, with the appointments of Chief Financial Officer Julian Harkness and Financial Controller Natalie Cowper, the issues identified by the Audit department were now being rectified.
