2017-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 4

7. To ensure that grant recipients comply with state law concerning interest earned on mitigation grant funds, by June 2014, the Butte County benefit committee should establish policies and procedures to verify that grant recipients have placed grant awards in interest-bearing accounts, and that the interest is spent only on activities that mitigate the effect of tribal gaming on local jurisdictions.

2. To be better informed about the compensation of their consultants, including any potential conflicts of interest, California Communities and Municipal Finance should require the consulting firms that staff their organizations to disclose the amount and structure of compensation provided to individual consultants, including disclosing whether any of this compensation is tied to the volume of bond sales.

23. To ensure it is efficiently using its resources, the district should eliminate its board members' automobile or transportation allowances and instead reimburse them based on their business mileage or transit use.

1. The city of Indio should shift a share of the water facilities cost borne by Area 1 to Area 2 residents in proportion to the benefits Area 2 residents receive from the facilities. To do so, it should impose through its Indio Water Authority a water fee on Area 2 residents and use the related revenues to reduce the bond debt of Area 1.

2. To improve fiscal accountability and to ensure that audits are performed to appropriate standards, Irvine should adopt an internal audit function by December 2017.

6. To make certain that Irvine complies with the intent of competitive bidding for professional services, beginning immediately it should not include provisions in its RFPs for potential future services that are above and beyond the desired scope of work.

9. To maintain appropriate, transparent fiscal accountability, Irvine should amend city contracting and purchasing policies by December 2016 to make certain that all of its contracts and contract amendments with a proposed cost exceeding the threshold requiring city council or other approval receive the appropriate approvals, including approval for sole-source contracts. Further, city policies should require appropriate approvals when increases in spending authority are accomplished through a purchase order or other means.

10. To provide the public with adequate information regarding the city council's spending decisions, Irvine's city council should, by December 2016, include in its policies a requirement that motions by the council to appropriate revenue to fund a specific contract should name the recipients and proposed use of the funds.

11. To foster public confidence in its processes and findings, Irvine should conduct self-initiated investigations, reviews, or audits in an open and transparent manner that ensures independence. Specifically, Irvine should not establish advisory bodies exempt from open meeting laws to oversee these investigations, reviews, or audits. Instead, any required reports from contractors conducting such investigations, reviews, or audits should go to the city council or a standing committee of the city council to be discussed in either open or closed session, as appropriate.

2. To ensure that it is aware of the degree of property owners' compliance with its resale record ordinance, Novato should implement procedures that can help it monitor the sale or exchange of properties that require resale record inspections. The city should work with applicable stakeholders, such as realtors, to aid in this effort.

5. To verify that new property owners are aware of the health and safety concerns at their properties and any corrections they need to make, Novato should develop a process to ensure that it receives homeowners' cards.

34. To ensure that the resale record fees it charges is appropriate, Novato should establish a time frame to periodically determine whether the fees are commensurate with the cost of administering the resale record program. The city should ensure that it retains any documentation used to support its analyses and any subsequent adjustments to fees.

3. To ensure that it is aware of the degree of property owners' compliance with its resale record ordinance, Pasadena should implement procedures that can help it monitor the sale or exchange of properties that require resale record inspections. The city should work with applicable stakeholders, such as realtors, to aid in this effort.

6. To verify that new property owners are aware of the health and safety concerns at their properties and any corrections they need to make, Pasadena should develop a process to ensure that staff sign the inspection certificates and add them to the city's database.

9. To ensure that it can monitor the satisfaction individuals have with the resale record program and that it has a uniform approach for resolving complaints, Pasadena should develop a formal process for tracking the complaints it receives. In addition, Pasadena should develop a formal policy that describes how staff should evaluate complaints, and it should document its activities associated with resolving complaints, such as the resolution and the rationale for the resolution. The city should also establish a designated location in its database to record this information.

12. Pasadena should develop formal written procedures for staff to follow up on property owners' correction of violations. These procedures should identify the method in which staff document in the database the violations identified during inspections and their actions to bring the property into compliance. In addition, the procedures should identify where within the database these documents should be kept as well as identify the protocol for ensuring that repeat violations are corrected in a timely manner.

16. To ensure that property owners correct violations in a timely manner, Pasadena should develop a work plan by July 2016 to identify and address its enforcement backlog by April 2017, so that the city is up to date with its enforcement actions, such as issuing notice letters and monitoring property owners' actions to resolve violations. Pasadena's work plan should also include updating the completion status of the violations so unresolved violations can be identified and monitored for subsequent correction.

19. To ensure that property owners correct violations in a timely manner, Pasadena should follow through with its enforcement policies, such as issuing notice letters.

22. To ensure that property owners correct violations in a timely manner, Pasadena should establish a written process for staff to monitor and ensure that property owners correct violations, including accurately identifying the properties that have not obtained necessary permits or have not had required reinspections performed.

25. To ensure that it conducts its resale record inspections and completes the reports in a timely manner, Pasadena should establish a process to monitor its ability to meet its established time goals from application date to report issuance, such as developing a reminder report or using an automated feature of its database. Pasadena should also document the date the report is issued on the resale record report and in its database.

27. To ensure that it conducts its resale record inspections and completes the reports in a timely manner, Pasadena should review its time goals by July 2016 for the resale record program and modify them if necessary, factoring in property owners' expectations and staff resources to complete the resale record reports. If applicable, Pasadena should update its policies and procedures to reflect the revised time goals.

30. To ensure that it conducts its resale record inspections and completes the reports in a timely manner, Pasadena should establish a method to identify those inspections that have inspection dates requested by property owners.

32. To ensure that the resale record fees it charges is appropriate, Pasadena should finalize its formal fee study by April 2016.

35. To ensure that the resale record fees it charges is appropriate, Pasadena should establish a time frame to periodically determine whether the fees are commensurate with the cost of administering the resale record program. The city should ensure that it retains any documentation used to support its analyses and any subsequent adjustments to fees.

38. To ensure that it can demonstrate that its resale record inspectors are qualified, Pasadena should develop a process to maintain continuing education attendance records. The city should ensure that staff receive periodic continuing education through internal and external sources to keep them current on code requirements, especially when the requirements are updated.

40. If Pasadena subsequently requires its resale record inspectors to have International Code Council certifications, it should ensure that those staff maintain them in good standing to perform their necessary job functions.

9. Alameda County probation department should update its existing procedures to ensure that its staff are accurately recording family reunification service components within the statewide case management system.

11. To identify their population of dually involved youth, Alameda County's CWS and probation agencies should designate the data system they will use for tracking the dates and results of joint assessment hearings.

17. To identify their population of dually involved youth, Alameda County's CWS and probation agencies should provide guidance or training to staff on recording joint assessment hearing information consistently within the designated system.

6. To ensure that they consistently demonstrate that candidates are hired for permanent civil service positions based on valid and job-related criteria, regardless of their sex, each county should develop policies requiring hiring managers to document the reasons why they chose the selected candidate over others from the certified eligibility list.

7. To ensure that they consistently demonstrate that candidates are hired for permanent civil service positions based on valid and job-related criteria, regardless of their sex, each county should develop policies requiring hiring managers to document the reasons why they chose the selected candidate over others from the certified eligibility list.

1. To determine whether its trauma system is appropriately designed and serving the needs of residents in underserved areas and the needs of the most at-risk populations, the board should use Measure B funds to engage the College of Surgeons by July 2014 to perform a comprehensive assessment of the trauma system and then make the results available to the public.To the extent the assessment identifies weaknesses in the trauma system, the board should develop strategies to address those weaknesses where feasible. Specifically, the board should ask the College of Surgeons to do the following: assist the board in better defining and identifying underserved areas in Los Angeles.

2. To determine whether its trauma system is appropriately designed and serving the needs of residents in underserved areas and the needs of the most at-risk populations, the board should use Measure B funds to engage the College of Surgeons by July 2014 to perform a comprehensive assessment of the trauma system and then make the results available to the public. To the extent the assessment identifies weaknesses in the trauma system, the board should develop strategies to address those weaknesses where feasible. Specifically, the board should ask the College of Surgeons to do the following: review Measure B allocations to ensure that they are addressing the most pressing needs of at-risk populations in Los Angeles.

3. To determine whether its trauma system is appropriately designed and serving the needs of residents in underserved areas and the needs of the most at-risk populations, the board should use Measure B funds to engage the College of Surgeons by July 2014 to perform a comprehensive assessment of the trauma system and then make the results available to the public. To the extent the assessment identifies weaknesses in the trauma system, the board should develop strategies to address those weaknesses where feasible. Specifically, the board should ask the College of Surgeons to do the following: assess the adequacy of helicopter services it provides in underserved areas.

4. To determine whether its trauma system is appropriately designed and serving the needs of residents in underserved areas and the needs of the most at-risk populations, the board should use Measure B funds to engage the College of Surgeons by July 2014 to perform a comprehensive assessment of the trauma system and then make the results available to the public. To the extent the assessment identifies weaknesses in the trauma system, the board should develop strategies to address those weaknesses where feasible. Specifically, the board should ask the College of Surgeons to do the following: analyze how EMS might better use the data it collects to evaluate, improve, and report continuously on its trauma system.

5. To ensure that it allocates Measure B funds to address the most significant needs of residents within its trauma system, the board should reinstate a Measure B oversight committee, with participation from departments with trauma, EMS, and bioterrorism preparedness expertise, as well as representatives of the public. The oversight committee should review trauma system and other county needs annually and advise the board on Measure B expenditures. As part of its responsibilities, the oversight committee should reevaluate the Measure B allocation approach, taking into consideration the results of Los Angeles's comprehensive assessment and the effects of the Act, and issue a report on its findings no later than December 2015.

10. If San Diego County's benefit committee believes that its processes for distributing grant funds are vital to its effective management of distribution fund grants, it should seek legislative authority to change its process. Otherwise, San Diego County's benefit committee should refrain from placing limits on the time available for grant recipients to spend the grant funds.

16. To identify their population of dually involved youth, Santa Clara County's CWS and probation agencies should designate the data system they will use for tracking the dates and results of joint assessment hearings.

22. To identify their population of dually involved youth, Santa Clara County's CWS and probation agencies should provide guidance or training to staff on recording joint assessment hearing information consistently within the designated system.

19. To better ensure that foster children only receive psychotropic medications that are appropriate and medically necessary, counties should ensure that all foster children are scheduled to receive a follow-up appointment within 30 days of starting a new psychotropic medication.

20. To better ensure that foster children only receive psychotropic medications that are appropriate and medically necessary, counties should implement processes to ensure that foster children receive any needed mental health, psychosocial, behavioral health, or substance abuse services before and concurrently with receiving psychotropic medications.

21. To better ensure that foster children only receive psychotropic medications that are appropriate and medically necessary, counties should implement a systemic process for ensuring that court authorizations or parental consents are obtained and documented before foster children receive psychotropic medications and that court authorizations for psychotropic medications are renewed within 180 days as state law requires. The process should also ensure that the counties better document the court authorizations and parental consents in the foster children's case files.

23. To improve its oversight of foster children prescribed psychotropic medications, Sonoma County should immediately adopt the state guidelines for its physicians' use when prescribing psychotropic medications and the county's use when reviewing court authorization requests.

24. To improve its oversight of foster children prescribed psychotropic medications, Sonoma County should within six months, implement a process to review psychotropic medications that receive parental consent rather than court authorization.

17. To better understand the effectiveness of the mental health services in its special education program, East Side should use the six performance indicators we identified to perform analysis annually on the subset of students receiving mental health services.

4. To demonstrate to water customers how they are working to keep rates reasonable, the four water utilities should document their cost-saving efforts and quantify, to the extent possible, any specific cost savings achieved from their respective efforts.

1. To assist low-income water customers, Hesperia should work with its governing body to consider the feasibility of using revenues from sources other than water rates to implement a rate assistance program.

14. To ensure that it is appropriately maintaining custody of evidence items and complying with POST recommendations, the Department should conduct a comprehensive inventory to develop an accurate list of evidence and property.

18. To ensure that it is appropriately maintaining custody of evidence items and complying with POST recommendations, the Department should perform annual audits that are thorough and well documented.

4. To better communicate with parents and future IEP teams about reasons for any changes to student services, including changes to mental health services and student placements, Long Beach should develop a process to ensure that IEP teams record these reasons in student IEP documents.

10. To ensure that it complies with federal and state requirements, Long Beach should develop a process to ensure that IEP teams record, in student IEP documents, the rationale for residential treatment and any potential harmful effects of such placement.

14. To better understand the effectiveness of the mental health services in its special education program, Long Beach should use the six performance indicators we identified to perform analysis annually on the subset of students receiving mental health services.

4. To ensure that it is placing children only in safe homes, the department should measure its performance and adjust its practices to adhere to state law, which requires that all homes be assessed prior to the placement of the child.

1. To ensure that the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners (board) can more effectively exercise oversight for the department's significant information technology projects, the board should establish a standing committee comprised of board members to oversee and critically evaluate the status of the department's various information technology projects. Given the limited tenure of board members and the potential for multiyear and high-cost information technology projects, the board president should consider appointing as many committee members as practicable in order to promote continuity of oversight.

2. To ensure that the board can more effectively exercise oversight for the department's significant information technology projects, the board should develop reporting standards for the department's management to follow when discussing the status of information technology projects with the standing committee or the board. Such reporting standards should, at a minimum, specify the frequency with which the department's management makes such reports and require the following disclosures about each information technology project:
o The amount of project growth, in terms of both budget and scope of work, from initial project estimates through current projections.
o The results from system testing and a listing of the critical defects that exist and must be fixed prior to system use.
o The concerns the quality assurance contractor has raised and how the department is addressing them.

3. To ensure that the board can more effectively exercise oversight for the department's significant information technology projects, the board should develop a process for the board to designate certain information technology projects as having a potentially significant effect on business operations or customer relations, and require that department managers first obtain the board's approval before launching such critical new systems.

23. Until the Los Angeles Police Department receives further direction from the board, the committee, or Justice, it should address the specific deficiencies we found by reviewing the gangs it has entered into CalGang to ensure the gangs meet reasonable suspicion requirements. It should also begin reviewing the gang members it has entered into CalGang to ensure the existence of proper support for each criterion. It should purge from CalGang any records for gangs or gang members that do not meet the criteria for entry. Individuals who are independent from the ongoing administration and use of CalGang should lead this review. The agency should complete the gang and gang member reviews in phases, with the final phase for gangs to be completed by June 30, 2018, and the final phase for gang members to be completed by June 30, 2019.

24. Until Los Angeles Police Department receives further direction from the board, the committee, or Justice, it should address the specific deficiencies we found by developing or modifying as necessary all its policies and procedures related to CalGang to ensure they align with state law, CalGang policy, the federal regulations, and the state guidelines. In particular, the agency should implement appropriate policies and procedures for entering gangs; performing supervisory reviews of gang and gang member entries; performing periodic CalGang record reviews; sharing CalGang information; and complying with juvenile notification requirements. The agency should complete this recommendation by March 31, 2017.

13. To assist low-income water customers, Quartz Hill water District should work with its governing body to consider the feasibility of using revenues from sources other than water rates to implement rate assistance programs for low-income water customers.

15. To ensure that it is effectively preventing and addressing incidents of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying in its schools, Sacramento City Unified should ensure that school sites follow the complaint procedures established in its policies.

25. Until Santa Ana Police Department receives further direction from the board, the committee, or Justice, it should address the specific deficiencies we found by reviewing the gangs it has entered into CalGang to ensure the gangs meet reasonable suspicion requirements. It should also begin reviewing the gang members it has entered into CalGang to ensure the existence of proper support for each criterion. It should purge from CalGang any records for gangs or gang members that do not meet the criteria for entry. Individuals who are independent from the ongoing administration and use of CalGang should lead this review. The agency should complete the gang and gang member reviews in phases, with the final phase for gangs to be completed by June 30, 2018, and the final phase for gang members to be completed by June 30, 2019.

27. Until Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office receives further direction from the board, the committee, or Justice, it should address the specific deficiencies we found by reviewing the gangs it has entered into CalGang to ensure the gangs meet reasonable suspicion requirements. It should also begin reviewing the gang members it has entered into CalGang to ensure the existence of proper support for each criterion. It should purge from CalGang any records for gangs or gang members that do not meet the criteria for entry. Individuals who are independent from the ongoing administration and use of CalGang should lead this review. The agency should complete the gang and gang member reviews in phases, with the final phase for gangs to be completed by June 30, 2018, and the final phase for gang members to be completed by June 30, 2019.

28. Until Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office receives further direction from the board, the committee, or Justice, it should address the specific deficiencies we found by developing or modifying as necessary all its policies and procedures related to CalGang to ensure they align with state law, CalGang policy, the federal regulations, and the state guidelines. In particular, the agency should implement appropriate policies and procedures for entering gangs; performing supervisory reviews of gang and gang member entries; performing periodic CalGang record reviews; sharing CalGang information; and complying with juvenile notification requirements. The agency should complete this recommendation by March 31, 2017.

2. To assist low-income water customers, Victorville should work with its governing body to consider the feasibility of using revenues from sources other than water rates to implement a rate assistance program.

6. To demonstrate to water customers how they are working to keep rates reasonable, the four water utilities should document their cost-saving efforts and quantify, to the extent possible, any specific cost savings achieved from their respective efforts.

7. To ensure that it does not use revenues from ratepayers for inappropriate purposes, by October 2015, Victorville should revise its policies to prohibit transfers or loans of water fee revenue for nonwater district purposes. Victorville should also revise its investment policy that specifies the circumstances under which it can invest water revenues—setting prudent limits on its investment in assets that the Victorville city council manages.

8. To address the excess interest expense resulting from loans to the city of Victorville and the building of the wastewater plant, Victorville should seek reimbursement from the city for its unrecovered costs. Victorville should work with the city to prepare and submit to the water district board and the Victorville city council by October 2015 a formal repayment plan including specific dates and payments to be made to ensure that the water district and its ratepayers are made whole. When the water district board approves such a plan, it should take steps to ensure compliance with the repayment plan.