Peralta Community College District
Recovery Team Meeting Minutes
July 7, 2010
Present: John Banisadr, MaryBeth Benvenutti, Brandon Harrison, Jim Grivich, Susan Rinne, Tom Henry, Chancellor Allen, Debbie Budd, Sheryl Queen,
Carmen Fairley, Dettie Rosario, Trudy Largent, David Betts, Minh Lam, Mike Lenahan, Judy Cohen, Dominique Benavides, Diane Hughes
(Ciber), Jerry Kenney (Ciber), and Jacob Ng.
Facilitator: Tom Henry
Discussion Follow-up Action Agenda Item and Presenter(s)
Meeting Called to Order
I. Status of 2008-09 Audit
Report (VTD)
1:07 p.m.
II. 2009-10 Audit Report
Preparation
Brandon Harrison gave an update on the audit status. As of yesterday, he received schedules, reconciliation on Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, transfers, and cash. He is waiting on Fund 1 cash reconciliation. Fund 1 was off by a few million dollars last time but is now off by around $200,000. He is much more comfortable with the threshold. Goal of the reconciliation was this Friday.

Expected Draft: Hoping to produce a draft of financial statement by next
Wednesday, July 14, 2010.

Key Findings: He can provide findings thus far without responses. Tom will forward the responses we have so far. Brandon will deliver the rest as soon as they are complete.

Bank/Account Reconciliation:

Year End Account Payables/Receivables: Dettie, Susan, and MaryBeth are working on it. Per Susan Rinne, the accounts won’t be all reconciled but can be identified and corrected in 2009/10 fiscal year.
 Closing Categorical: Per Brandon Harrison, Yvonne Dorough was responsible for Accrual last year. Categorical are still being reviewed.
Per Brandon Harrison, the date is not set for the audit visit in August. It is usually in
August for one or two weeks for control testing and follow ups. A listing has not been
Judy Yu is working on it.
Brandon, Susan, Dettie, and MaryBeth will meet later today to decide to get it to the right liability account or grouping it.
Brandon will have an
Excel with district
Page 1 of 5

III. 2010-11 Budget
Development
IV. ACCJC and Grand
Jury Reports
V. Recovery Report
Peralta Community College District
Recovery Team Meeting Minutes
July 7, 2010 sent to the District, but will be once the date is set. 2009/10 audit cannot start until
2008/09 audit is complete.
Tom Henry thanked Brandon and his team for their work on audit process. Regarding accreditation, October 15, 2010 is the deadline for the progress report.

Meeting with SMT/Business Managers: Mike Lenahan will speak tomorrow at the SMT meeting about the importance of getting the budgets in from each college. Other issues as moving targets:
1.
Have budgets from each college. Furlough day calculation is a concern.
Jim Grivich came up with more accurate calculations for employee benefits. Mike is hopeful to enter budgets in the system by mid August.
2.
Stakeholders, August 18
,
2010 (flex day).

Meeting with Stakeholders: per Tom Henry, Debra Weintraub requested the budget development process to be stopped. Tom Henry replied via email and explained that the deadline cannot be ignored. Debra W. suggested that we use the 18 th
or 19 th
of August for setting up a meeting with the faculty. Per Debbie
Budd, the 19 th will work because of campus day/ summit. They can meet at the campus.

Posting Budget in System: MaryBeth Benvenutti commented that Kyu Lee can give her permission to override budget. Per Mike Lenahan, as soon as Jim
Grivich signs off on a budget, it can be loaded.
Tom Henry welcomed Dr. Trudy Largent to the District.

Timely and Substantive Response: Tom Henry commented that ACCJC and
Grand Jury Reports went public. He stressed the importance of the response to be timely and substantive to both reports.

Recovery Report: The key deadline is January. In June, ACCJC acknowledged our progress and realized that we are sincere and need more time. Our sincerity was registered with the commission. We are going in the right direction and in time we will get off sanctions. We will have to divide up the workload.

Due to Chancellor’s Office – September 9, 2010.
Page 2 of 5 personnel responsible and date for office space needed by Friday.
.
Debbie Budd will be responsible to communicate to the faculty that a budget will have to be adopted prior to September.
Tom Henry and Debbie

Comments:
The Sacramento Chancellor’s office felt that Peralta was serious about rectifying the deficiency. They were prepared to step in and help. Tom Henry has a good matrix and template to use for monitoring progress. He plans to send a rough draft to key participants and to ACCJC. There is a column that ACCJC helped develop, so they are very supportive of the matrix. Tom Henry will dissect 3 documents: ACCJC deficiency, audit report recommendations, and Grand Jury recommendations. He will list resources, due date, progress, status, and point person. Tom Henry wants to demonstrate that we plan to address each point so
ACCJC can easily look at it and aid them in writing their report. It also serves as evidence for the ACCJC report. The Board needs to adopt it by October 15,
2010.
Peralta Community College District
Recovery Team Meeting Minutes
July 7, 2010

Judy Cohen stated that Berkeley City College (BBC) had their audit and the auditors came up with only 5 findings. For 2009/10, the auditors did not find anything. External auditors are coming in July to do student selection form. BBC is currently preparing for them.

Mike Lenahan noted that there is a Board Budget Workshop on July 19, 2010.

Trudy Largent said she looks forward to working with everyone and appreciates the budget. HR will look into the list of reductions and moving forward as part of the team.

Carmen Fairley noted that the team from EDD to audit the stimulus money will be here on July 19, 2010. She will provide Tom Henry with more information.

Debbie Budd said annual attendance report is due on July 15, 2010. She will work with Dettie Rosario and file it correctly and track non credit enrollment in order to be dropped for nonpayment.

Jacob Ng commented on Promissory note. His office is calling students to come in and pay. So far, almost half a million has been collected. Regarding nonresident tuition refund structure, he is torn that non-residential students are being charged 10% of amount due for class if dropped on the 3 rd
instruction day. That is a significant amount of money. In the past, the date was changed internally.
But now, students have a hold on their transcript. Moving forward we will follow the policy for the Fall semester, but waive fees for students that owed from previous terms.

Diane Hughes noted that the general ledger interface is working successfully and
Budd will be the recipients of the recovery reports.
MaryBeth has a list of all agencies. Someone in
Finance needs to notify
6 of the agencies that we requested extension from that the draft will be available in Mid
August.
Page 3 of 5

Peralta Community College District
Recovery Team Meeting Minutes
July 7, 2010 running overnight.

John Banisadr has 3 issues:
1.
Vendor database cleanup. Peralta got penalized for not having W-9 for all vendors. It was cleaned up and down to 5,200. An email was sent to vendors three times with little response. Suggested making vendors inactive to force them to be updated in the system.
2.
The need to go out to bid for audit. We missed the deadline for 2010-11.
Per Tom Henry, new auditors don’t know us or our process and we should wait until we are off of ACCJC sanctions. We are locked in for this fiscal year. We may look into it mid next year. As for the
Foundation, they may have their own auditors but it will cost more.
3.
Need to address fixed asset tracking. Not sure if it was ever implemented.
We spent money with High Jump. Room numbers were assigned and corrected. We cannot track it after equipment is delivered to the store keeper. Software has been paid for in 2008 for $30,000. MaryBeth
Benvenutti suggested having a Federal equipment inventory. Mike
Lenahan commented that Federal is different from State rule. We have a lot of IT issues that need to be resolved.

Debbie Budd suggested that Finance should oversee Measure A Funds and not
General Services hopefully starting next year. Will have to speak to Sadiq Ikharo about it first.

Susan Rinne suggested getting authorized signature for the county checks for payroll.

Chancellor Allen:
1.
Oakland Tribune called, and asked for his reaction to accreditation report placing Peralta on probation. He replied, “It’s great.” It could have been much worse. Oakland Tribune published one sentence on it.
2.
He is happy to be around competent people. All of us are extremely competent.
3.
Thanked Tom Henry and Mike Lenahan for saving us from $100,000 in penalties from IPEDS. We are on probation and no show cause due to the recovery team.
4.
OPEB debt that we have not dealt with.
 Tom Henry’s take on parity pay is that the District took advantage of the state’s
Page 4 of 5

Peralta Community College District
Recovery Team Meeting Minutes
July 7, 2010 flexibility. We can transfer funds where we need it. At the last hour, the team made decisions and took action. It was also felt that the PCCD had negotiated language that allowed for flexibility regarding parity pay.

Close: Behavior has to change within the institution. Need to increase productivity by attacking it in different ways. Look at work ethics and commitment to task and ownership. Lastly, we need accountability.
Adjournment:
Next meeting:
2:54 p.m.
August 25, 2010 from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. District Board Room
Minutes taken: Sui Song 466-7245 ssong@peralta.edu
Page 5 of 5