NAVASOTA, Texas (KRHD) — The Navasota City Council approved a controversial 5-year contract with Brooks Watson & Co. to handle the city's annual audit, despite the firm being five months late completing last year's financial report.
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The unanimous Monday vote came with mixed reactions from residents who expressed concerns about rewarding what they called "bad behavior" from the auditing firm.
"I think Brooks Watson failed us last year. They turned in the prior audit at the extreme last minute. We almost put our bond rating in danger," Burt Bearden said.
New City Manager Robert Hemminger addressed council and residents at Monday night's meeting, acknowledging the importance of timely audits.
"We certainly recognize that timeliness and accountability are extremely important with regard to the annual audit," Hemminger said.
Local resident Taylor Perry said Hemminger's explanation helped clarify some issues but didn't address accountability concerns.
"He did talk very well. I will say that he bridged some of the misunderstandings. He also talked about the bids and how one was incomplete out of the three that they've received, but I wasn't hearing anything about accountability," Perry said.
The new contract includes a $10,000 price increase for Brooks Watson's services, which has drawn criticism from residents.
"Almost a 100% price increase for no obvious reason other than they said, well, the audit's a bit more complicated than we anticipated. To me, their failure to anticipate should have been a cost that they bore, not us," Bearden said.
The city did include a termination clause in the contract allowing officials to end the agreement with 30 days notice if expectations aren't met.
"They gave them a little stipulation that if they're not meeting the expectation they can terminate the contract within 30 days with a 30 day notice. I think that's great. That needs to be in place, so kudos to whoever put that in place. That's great, but at the same time, I don't think we should be rewarding bad behavior," Perry said.
15 ABC reached out to the city but no one was available for an interview and the city did not provide a statement. The city manager did say during the meeting that staff would be working closely with the audit firm.
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