Commission to receive update on ACEMS for operational audit
Anderson County officials were provided an update from the county’s finance and purchasing departments during a county operations committee meeting Monday that the bids for a request for proposals from vendors (RFP) to conduct a comprehensive operational audit of the county’s ambulance service (ACEMS) were issued earlier this month and that two vendors have shown interest.
At the May 17 county commission meeting commissioners unanimously approved a request for an RFP to determine how much it would cost to conduct a comprehensive audit of ACEMS. County officials said an audit would prove beneficial in helping them find possible ways the county can save money with ACEMS’s budget.
At that same meeting, it was revealed that officials were requesting the audit be conducted for the period of July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017 and possibly for a longer time frame depending on the affordability of the vendor proposals.
During the operations meeting on Monday, July 10, commissioners on the operations committee were apprised by purchasing and finance department officials that bids on the ACEMS audit will close on Thursday, July 13, and that county officials will be presented with a detailed report of the costs of the audit from the two vendors.
Commissioners will meet next Monday, July 17, for their regular monthly Commission meeting at 6:30 p.m. inside the county courthouse in Clinton in room 312 where they will discuss the audit in more depth.
At the operations meeting Monday, three action items were discussed at length: selecting five people to serve on an audit advisory committee once the audit investigation gets underway to review and make recommendations to the audit report; appointing a project manager for the county to help oversee the day to day operations of the audit review process; and forwarding to commission without recommendation a request to select the winning bidder.
Purchasing agent Katherine Ajmeri presented an update on the RFP process to the operations committee and reported that the purchasing office was currently at work clarifying information on both vendors and was expecting to receive information from the vendors later this week on costs associated with the audit.
Vendors have until Thursday to submit bids on proposals.
Law Director Jay Yeager suggested commissioners “draw from local resources” when considering who to appoint to the audit review committee and project manager.
“We have some very knowledgeable people here,” Yeager said. “We need to have people on the committee who have experience in that area [EMS].”
Yeager then recommended that commission appoint Randy Walters, assistant to finance director, as project manager.
“Randy brings a lot of knowledge to this. I like the quality of work we have been seeing from Randy,” he said.
Finance Director Natalie Erb also approved of having commission select Walters to serve as project manager.
Erb said she was “certainly in support” of having him appointed as project manager and stated that she had hired him to work in the finance department knowing he could bring to the department valuable “project management expertise experience.”
The motion was unanimous to approve forwarding a recommendation to full commission next week to appoint Walters to fulfill the role of project manager.