Cr Nobby Clark voiced his frustration during an extraordinary meeting of the Invercargill City Council’s risk and assurance committee earlier this week, when councillors had to be part of a lengthy auditing process to order to adopt the council’s annual report ahead of the deadline.
Cr Clark said the Invercargill council was always at the "tail end" of Audit New Zealand’s priorities.
The entity carried out its work at the country’s three largest councils, followed by councils of concern before going north to south, he said.
He showed discontent, saying it had increased its prices at the beginning of the year but he had not noticed any improvement compared with previous years.
"It is not fair for us to always be last in the queue and have staff running around stressing to the max to get it done in time. It is not good enough," he said.
Besides the delays, councillors were also frustrated Audit New Zealand’s opinion would be in the form of a "qualified opinion" — the type given when an auditor believes the financial figures in a document are fairly presented, with the exception of a specified area.
In this case, the contentious point was in relation to an asset evaluation: Audit New Zealand believed the council had understated the fair value of its assets and therefore the positive increase in the value of the performance.
However, council officers did not agree with that assessment.
Council financial services manager Patricia Christie said while there were some indicators of increase in the March and June quarters, she did not believe there was enough evidence the assets needed to be revalued.
She also said the council would be due a revaluation of its infrastructure by the middle of next year.
Cr Darren Ludlow was frustrated the process had taken so long and the council had been given a "qualified opinion",
which was not seen as good from the Government’s perspective.
"Neither of us want to go through this and ... we had more than our fair share of publicity with [Department of Internal Affairs], so getting a qualified opinion and your name read out in Parliament doesn’t go down too well."
He asked if council staff could have done anything differently to speed up the audit process.
Audit New Zealand representative Dereck Ollsson acknowledged there were pressures and a shortage of auditors and he hoped things would be better next year.
However, he suggested the council make asset revaluations more often.
The council’s annual report was tabled but is not yet publicly available due to final modifications which need to be made.
A previous report stated the council had an operating deficit, before the revaluation of investment property, of $700,000, an increase of $200,000 from 2020.
