Whitesboro City Administrator Phil Harris addressed the city budget and criticisms of his starting salary in a News-Record interview late last week.
Harris said the city goes through an annual audit process, like any other city.
According to Texas statutes, in Chapter 103 from the ‘Audit of Municipal Finances,’ Section 103.001 (a) states, “a municipality shall have its records and accounts audited annually and shall have an annual financial statement prepared based on the audit.”
Harris said that after an audit is performed, the records should remain sealed.
He said this during a previous council meeting and during this interview.
Harris is concerned that his predecessor, Julie Arrington, opened the sealed audit.
Harris said this is a “red flag” and the city is waiting on an auditor to tell them if anything has been changed to the budget because of the audit being opened.
Call for a forensic audit
When asked about the forensic audit that Mayor Dave Blaylock had previously announced a petition would go out for, Harris said some wanted a 25-year audit, but he said the city couldn’t afford it.
“I don’t know what people expect to find in a 25-year audit, but that’s not good use of our money,” Harris said.
According to Harris, 25 years is too far to research to detect fraud.
“When I talk about an audit of where people are stealing money or there’s fraud or something like that, you can go back about 18 months to 24 months with hope that you can get some of that money back,” Harris said.
He said the 18-to-24-month window is what his office anticipates.
They will have a forensic audit on Whitesboro’s records and finances going back 18 to 24 months.
“It’s a good thing for me. A lot of what I’ve been doing is— I want a line that says I’ve verified this and this is what we’re doing going forward so that I’m not looking behind me the whole time of what’s out there that I don’t know about,” Harris said.
For example, he’ll be looking at phone bills and at who all the phones were assigned to, finding out if the city is paying for phones that they shouldn’t be paying for.
Harris said the audit will not be for more than 24 months.
“I think what people don’t understand is that people say the council is dirty or they’ve been doing things. The council has a stamp that signs a check, they don’t have access to the checks. They only have access to them when they need to be signed,” Harris said.
Admin’s role as a CFO
Harris said he wants to look ahead and move forward.
“I’m more about how we can get better at doing accounts payable and getting people paid on time using our buying power, that’s what I’m looking for. If we find fraudulent— great. And I’m not doing that work. I want somebody else to do that,” Harris said.
He prefers a third party to take care of investigating that part.
“I don’t do general entries. I don’t think that’s my job. Julie (Arrington) did. I don’t know, I think she was comfortable with doing that. I don’t think that’s my job, I think my job is more oversight. Assurance that it’s done right, not actually doing it myself. It’s like a CFO,“ Harris said.
He said he wouldn’t expect a CFO to be making entries, but they would understand what’s going on when they read it.
“Council people are never going to go through a book that thick. That is not their job. A budget is not complicated, you can go through every department and say ‘hey, this is what the budget is for this group.’ At the end of that, they (the council) never got clarity. They never got comfortable with what (Arrington) was doing on the budget, from a description perspective. This is (the council) telling me because I wasn’t in the meetings,” Harris said.
He said the council told Arrington to take 2023-2024’s budget and use the prior year’s budget and put it in the system for this year, 2024-2025. He said the numbers are not the same and he has brought it to the council.
“What she was presenting to them, they didn’t understand,” Harris said.
And he would like it corrected.
“What I want the auditors to do is correct the system to reflect tying back to their financial statements that they already had an opinion,” he said.
Pay raises for city workers
According to Harris, once the audit is done, they can move forward with raises for city employees.
He said the council fully wanted to give raises; they just didn’t understand the implications of planned and unplanned events like the unplanned water main break and electrical emergency behind Dennard’s.
Although the council would like to move forward with raises for City employees, Harris said he could not give them a definitive answer on whether they could do that because he wasn’t sure if the entries in the budget were accurate or not.
Harris said the council did not feel comfortable moving forward with raises without the clarity of the budget.
City admin’s salary
When asked if he thought the council was then comfortable giving him a $160,000 a year salary, he said ‘yes.’
“I think they paid for what they got,” Harris said.
Harris said he looked at salary comparisons from surrounding cities to decide on what his salary should be.
He said the city is a business and that is not any different than any other business.
“The only decision that’s different here is that, at the bank that I was returning checks when people would write bad checks, or I was paying them. And here I decide whether I’m going to have their electricity cut off or not. That’s really not that different,” Harris said. “I’ve done commercial construction. I think that’s an unusual attribute for somebody who is in this role.”
He believes his diverse background lends to his new role with the city.
“I think what people don’t appreciate is the lack of understanding the transferability of the skills that I have. I have worked at companies where I’m running projects for 55,000 people globally. That’s different than what other people have done. Do I think that’s transferable here? Absolutely. It’s about communication. It’s about trying to help them figure out what the business problem is and solve the business problem,” Harris said.
“I don’t feel like I have to credentialize myself because I think I’m more worth what I’m getting and I think they paid for what they got for. If you compare what my credentials look like to my predecessors, I don’t have any problem asking for the money I’m asking for because I’m earning every bit of it. Because when somebody does what they are doing here, I can’t just walk in here and just do business as usual. This is not what we’re dealing with. This is a mess and we got to get it fixed,” Harris said.
Harris said he feels there has been an undue focus on his salary.
“When I’ve felt like I tried to communicate about these issues in open session, we’re focusing on how much money I’m making. I knew when I took this job, how much money I’m making, people were going to ask that question,” Harris said. “I think what’s being lost is we’re fixing a mess. That’s what they asked me to come and do, was fix a mess. Not just from a financial perspective, but from an organizational morale and organizational direction.”
Again, he said he is looking ahead and moving forward.
“I’m just trying to get the city back on its feet. I think these things are relevant, looking at other cities, when that is put out there. To compare me to somebody else’s experience, I think you got a deal,” Harris said.
Harris said he is waiting on the auditor to inform him when things are complete and what the City’s next steps will be with the budget and raises.
“All the things I’ve done is trying to reduce the overhead,” Harris said.