Regarding your recent Stadium audit article. Your $1.75 cost per citizen implies City of Santa Clara citizens paid for the audit. The audit was paid for by the legally separate Stadium Authority.
Audit fees were $180,010, not $200,000 as reported.
We independently identified $229,239 in unreimbursed staff costs. The City was reimbursed while the audit was underway for some of those costs. We thus presented the “net reimbursable” $114,781.
We reported but did not claim we “found” the parking dispute amount. We stated that information came from City records.
We did not state anywhere in our report, as the article asserts, that the $894,228 in Construction Fund monies used for Stadium public safety operations should not have been used or that the Stadium Operating Fund should have been used instead. We reported that the Stadium Authority Board never authorized those expenditures through appropriations in either FYs 2014-15 or 2015-16.
The article reports annual statements of Stadium operations were produced and are posted on the Stadium Authority’s website. That is not correct; the annual financial audit is posted but annual statements of Stadium operations were not produced during the years reviewed though required by the Stadium.
Fred Brousseau, Harvey Rose Associates
