November 29, 2012
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A Colorado Community Media Publication
ourwestminsternews.com
Adams County and Jefferson County, Colorado • Volume 68, Issue 6
Audit reveals missteps County aims to improve purchasing processes By Darin Moriki
dmoriki@ourcoloradonews.com
Maraena Ortiz works on her piece for the Memory Project in Amy Laydon’s art class at Mandalay Middle School. The projects is an initiative in which art students create portraits for children around the world who have been neglected, orphaned or disadvantaged. Laydon’s students will be sending their portraits to children in Rwanda. Photos by Ashley Reimers
Students draw for a purpose
By Ashley Reimers
areimers@ourcoloradonews. com
Art students at Mandalay Middle School in Westminster are taking extra pride in their recent art project. The students are involved in the Memory Project, a unique initiative that connects art students with children around the world who have been neglected, orphaned or disadvantaged through portraits. “What happens is we received a photos of orphaned children, in this case from Rwanda, and the students then draw a portrait of the photo,” said Amy Laydon, art teacher at Mandalay. “Then we ship the photos back to Rwanda for the children to keep as a memory.” Laydon’s eighth-grade art students have been working on their portraits for a couple of weeks. She said this project is a nice change to the typical selfportrait activity, which students have been doing since kindergarten. The students also have the task of raising $15 in order to be able to ship the portraits back to Rwanda. “The Memory Project gives the students a sense of life halfway around the world and how lucky they are to have everything they do in the United States,” Laydon said. “It’s also a great alternative to just doing
Landon Warriner works on his piece for the Memory Project in Amy Laydon’s art class at Mandalay Middle School. The projects is an initiative in which art students create portraits for children around the world who have been neglected, orphaned or disadvantaged. Laydon’s students will be sending their portraits to children in Rwanda. another self-portrait project, too.” For Landon Warriner the project has been fun and challenging at the same time. He said because he is making a portrait for someone else, there
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is more pressure to make it the best he can. “When I got the picture I thought it would be hard just figuring out how I was going to process it,” Warriner said. “But I like drawing for a purpose. It makes it a lot more fun,” Warriner said. “ Fallin Smith also felt the pressure. She said this portrait is a gift to a child and she wants to make it something special.
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“It makes you kind of nervous, so you try harder,” she said. “Ms. Laydon said that kids don’t have very many pictures of themselves, so the fact that we are drawing from one of their only photos means a lot.” The portraits will be on display in the school before they are sent to Rwanda in March. For more information on the Memory Project, visit www. memoryproject.org.
A third-party audit of the county’s purchasing process has revealed a number of errors that ranged from incorrectly authorized purchases to miscommunicated or misunderstood purchasing practices. The 31-page study conducted by Colorado Independent Consultants Network found that 32 of the 50 purchases handpicked from 26 county departments to be tested “were not properly authorized.” Two of the purchases were approved by noncounty board members without approval from a county employee with proper authority, while the remaining 30 were either not signed at all or signed by someone without the appropriate authority level. To resolve this issue, the study recommended the county revise its purchasing policies by requiring officials to sign individual invoices rather than a cover sheet for invoice batches. “What it means to us is that someone actually touched that invoice and must have looked at it or at least put their pen to the paper on it, because their signature is on it,” Colorado Independent Consultants Network founder John Olenberger explained. “When you sign a batch cover sheet, you’d like to think that someone looked at every invoice within that batch, but there’s no way from an audit standpoint to ascertain that.” Olenberger said his firm did not determine how much money was subject to this batch cover sheet approval process, but instead focused on how the process itself could be improved. County accounting manager Mary Ha said the county is currently in the process of implementing a JD Edwards electronic signature module that would phase out these problems. Becky Kessler, the county’s digital content coordinator, said these centralized automated purchasing efforts will in place by next year but was unable to provide a specific date. The study also suggested the county create a timeline for changes to be implemented and conduct training classes to ensure county employees are on the same page for purchasing procedures. County purchasing manager Loren Imhoff said the first purchasing process class will be Jan. 31 and will be held on a biannual basis. Apart from the report’s findings, Olenberger commended the county’s transparency efforts to identify areas of improvement. “I think that it needs to be noted that they’re taking huge steps forward in not only establishing an internal audit function, but also being very transparent about what comes out of it,” Olenberger said. “There’s really no shame in saying, ‘Yeah, we have some areas that we need to improve on.’ — everyone does.” Kessler agreed and said the county “wants to be a leader in government best practices.” “I think it’s very proactive on Adams County’s part, because no one came to us and said, `You need to have a study,’” Kessler said. “This is an ongoing process, so Adams County is going to continue to look throughout all of our areas and take a hard look at what we’re doing on a regular basis, ask those hard questions, and then revise and review all of our policies.”