Members of the Winlock City Council convened for their first regular meeting of the month on Monday, June 8, and after some discussion, ended up tabling the approval of hiring an outside certified public accountant (CPA) to review the South Lewis County community’s financial documents until the city finally hires a new treasurer.
During the meeting, a pair of local business owners offered to donate both material and labor to renovate the basketball court at Winolequa Memorial Park.
Additionally, despite the approval of a contract through Impact Staffing Solutions to hire flaggers for the upcoming Winlock Egg Days parade, Winlock Mayor Victoria Marincin explained Impact Staffing Solutions was apparently unable to secure flaggers to work for the city.
Councilors approved the contract last month after Winlock Police Chief Stephen Valentine initially requested the hiring of designated flaggers in April, to help both his department deal with the crowd and traffic, and the city avoid having to pay overtime to staff from other city departments in order to work as flaggers.
“They didn’t have flaggers for us to use. So we’re going to have to go through another company,” Winlock City Councilor Jeramy Allman added. “So the mayor and chief are going to try to contact tomorrow to make sure they have the flaggers that we need.”
Marincin stated a special meeting would most likely need to be called in order to approve a new contract with another employment firm if they could guarantee that flaggers would actually be provided, as the Winlock Egg Days festival begins on Friday, June 19, the week before the city council’s next regular meeting on June 22.
As for the Winolequa Park basketball court, local business owners Roy Talbott of The Evergreen Egg, and Austin Reed of Elevated Dirtworks, have offered to donate the material, labor and equipment to redo the court.
“The basketball court down there, it’s been broken since as far as, I don’t know,” Talbott said.
While working together during a volunteer clean up day, Talbott and Reed decided to collaborate to get the court fixed along with Whistlestop Investments, he added.
Talbott also asked permission from the council to organize future fundraising events to pay for other improvements and renovations at the park. The council unanimously approved accepting the donation for court renovations.
As for the hiring of a CPA — Teresa D. Johnson CPA, Inc. — approval of the contract was tabled until a new treasurer is hired by a vote of 3-2, with Councilors Roland “Chuck” Camps and Alishia Hornburg opposing the motion to table.
Initially, Camps was concerned about the lack of liability acceptance for accounting errors outlined in the CPA contract, along with how often the city would actually need the CPA with how much it would cost.
Allman also took issue with the contract, as it stipulated the city could be charged an amount “not to exceed $31,500.” According to the contract, standard billing rates for CPAs are $274 an hour, $205 an hour for accountants and $114 an hour for financial analysts.
Marincin explained she was recommended to use Johnson as a CPA as she has already done similar work for another municipality. Additionally, Marinicin initially proposed the idea of hiring a third party CPA to review the city’s finances when she first assumed office earlier this year following multiple hits during previous state audits.
According to the Office of the Washington State Auditor’s website, both accountability and financial statement audits were conducted for the City of Winlock in 2024, with the audits looking at the city’s financial data from Jan. 1, 2019, through Dec. 31, 2021.
The financial statements audit found city staff had “deficiencies in internal controls that represent a material weakness,” but attributed accounting errors found to turnover in the city’s clerk-treasurer position, where a third-party accountant was hired to file annual reports from 2019 through 2021.
With the city still lacking a treasurer since former Winlock City Treasurer Jill Davis resigned in March, Allman questioned if the CPA would just be telling them what they already know based on the financial documents they currently have, which Davis prepared.
He wanted to wait until the new treasurer, whenever hired, had the chance to go through the documents.
“They work off what we give them, and if we don’t give them everything, we still pay them and we still have the same problem,” Allman said. “And they hold no responsibility and we have nobody to hold accountable because we don’t have a treasurer to hold accountable. We have somebody filling in to be treasurer, who’s already doing other jobs.”
Hornburg still wanted to move forward, stating she believed even without a treasurer it was better to let the CPA go ahead and start reviewing city finances.
During the meeting, councilors also approved a pair of event liquor licenses for an upcoming “Beer & Burger” fundraiser night at the Winlock Senior Center scheduled for July 16, and for the Winlock Historical Society’s beer garden during the Egg Days festival.
The council also moved to reschedule a workshop to review the city’s nuisance ordinance until after their regular council meeting on Monday, Aug. 24.
For those who missed the meeting, Winlock resident Johnny Hochgraefe is now taking video recording of Winlock City Council meetings, which can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@videos4archive. Additionally, meeting audio recordings are available on the city’s website at https://www.cityofwinlock.com/172/City-Council.
