On April 14, the Long Beach Board of Trustees Audit Committee held a meeting for the public to discuss the key players involved in the audit, their roles and a potential timeline.
An audit is an inspection of financial records by independent bodies, LBCC does one every year with their auditing firm with the auditing team as intermediaries.
There are three groups, the Committee staffed by the LBCC board of trustee members and faculty, the auditing team and the auditing firm. The Committee consists of a handful of trustees, including Uduak-Joe Ntuk, Virginia Baxter, Mike Munoz, Marlene Drinwine, John Thompson, and Cindy Baker.
The committee met with the auditing team to help interface with Clifton Larson Allen LLP which is LBCC’s auditing firm. The auditing team consists of directors Heather Mcgee and Syed Farhand, senior auditor Ricardo Prado and Resource Principal Renee Graves.
The audit team clarified their role in this situation and their position as intermediary between the school and the auditing firm.
Mcgee began by asking about the reopening plans for LBCC.
Interim Superintendent-President Mike Munoz answered, “We are still finalizing plans for fall … but our initial planning, we are looking at roughly between 30 to 35 percent of our course offerings being in face to face format.”
He went on to explain that plans may change as they continue to assess the impact of online classes on certain sectors.
The timeline for the audit is roughly starting in April and ending around December when they have to present their reports to the committee and the firm management.
Farhand said, “The timeline today is the official start of the audit process. We will be performing preliminary procedures in April … presenting final reports to the board by the respective due date which would be around November to December.”
Around the middle of the meeting, Farhand explained the responsibility of all parties involved.
Farhand said, “governance is responsible for strategic direction. Management is responsible for… the fair presentation of financial statements.” Lastly, Farhand clarified the role of the audit team which is to apply presentation of the financial statements that are prepared by management and perform the audit.
Near the end of the meeting, Graves explained the purpose of the meeting is to discuss the audit goals in a public setting.
Graves said, “It’s very important to know what the process looks like… so you have a good understanding of what we know our roles are and our role clearly is that we work for governance and we work with management.”
For more information, the recording of the meeting is available online on the LBCC YouTube channel.