The Greensboro City Council plans to make it easier to give money away at the Tuesday, Oct. 3 meeting in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber.
Item I.2 on the agenda for the meeting that begins at 5:30 p.m. is a resolution to amend a resolution passed by the City Council in 2004 that requires all nonprofit agencies that receive funding from the city to provide the an external audit to the city’s Internal Audit Division.
The information in the agenda packet notes that staff has been ignoring this procedure for nonprofit agencies that receive $25,000 or less from the city and requiring those nonprofit agencies to submit a “financial review” instead of a full audit.
The resolution, if passed by the City Council, would set the bar at $100,000 instead of $25,000. So only nonprofit agencies that receive more than $100,000 from the city would be required to submit a full audit for review. Nonprofit agencies that receive less than $100,000 would be allowed to submit a financial review along with meeting the other criteria, such as providing a form that confirms the agency is in fact recognized by the IRS as a nonprofit agency.
Staff notes that under this proposed amendment to the 2004 resolution, only two of the 16 contracts with nonprofit agencies approved in the current 2023-2024 budget would be required to submit a full audit. Those two are the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, which is receiving $200,000, and the Downtown Greensboro Inc. Ambassador Program, which is receiving $190,000.
The resolution calls for the amendment to be retroactive to all the agencies funded in the 2023-2024 budget as well as nonprofit agencies that are under contract to receive American Rescue Plan (ARP) enabled funds.
The City of Greensboro dumped all $59.4 million in ARP funds into its general fund. By doing this the city did not have to follow the reporting guidelines for allocating those funds to individual projects or agencies and since it allocated the money in one fell swoop, the deadlines for spending the money also became moot.
As a result the money being allocated to nonprofit agencies are not ARP funds, but money in the city’s general fund that was freed up by the extra $59.4 million in ARP funds that was added to the city’s revenue.
Taxpayer hold your breath. This will open the flood gates for greed, looting of the money to special interest and fraud, and excess claims of the race card.
Hey, it’s not their money. If I am giving 99 Gs of MY money to a charity, you can believe I will check it out.
More free money for Council woman Johnson and her not proven but consistently taking with no accountability , ” Cure for Violence” or whatever their name is this week.
If you can give money away then we the taxpayers are paying to much. Stop wasting our hard earn money on wasteful things. Give it back to the ones on fixed income who barley afford to pay these taxes.
As a taxpayer, I think there should be a complete accounting of ALL monies disbursed to all non- profits and any organization getting tax dollars. Our current city council and city manager seem to love skipping up and down the aisles of the council chamber, scattering our money willy-nilly toward anything that “sounds good”.
Stop giving money to so-called “non-profits”!!!!!
Would the City council agree to audit the past non-profits to see what they accomplished for their money gifts (other than paid salaries), and also how much money was eventually paid back in campaign donations to sitting council members, including those who were related by blood or marriage to sitting or former council members?
I recall Yvonne recusing her self from voting on money given to non-profits in which her relatives were the beneficiaries, but it really was a done deal by the Council anyway.
The only way to stop this, is at the ballot box.
Everyone has the right to complain about our govt; but if you don’t vote, your opinion ain’t worth jack.
Just my opinion.
It’s just so much fun spending other people’s money – and then claiming to be a saint!