County counsel outlines financial management and procurement draft; recommends splitting ordinance and policy

County counsel (referred to in the meeting as Mister Strickland) walked the board through a red-line draft of the county’s financial management and procurement policies, recommending a split between text that should be codified in ordinance and content better handled as an administratively updated policy adopted by resolution.

Strickland said many reporting, budgeting, and internal-operation provisions are more appropriately kept in a working policy that staff and the board can update by resolution, while certain items (for example, fiscal-year definitions and specific ordinance-level procurement limits) should remain in the code. He recommended retaining the current fiscal‑year language in ordinance rather than replacing it with a new proposed paragraph that repeats charter authority. He also noted the draft is roughly 50 pages and said dividing policy vs ordinance will make the public-hearing process simpler.

Other topics flagged by Strickland:
- Grants: suggested requiring full-board preapproval for grant applications that obligate a county match, while allowing the chair to sign grant applications that do not require a match.
- Debt service and budget references: asked to add explicit language if debt service funds are maintained.
- Audit selection and terms: suggested considering limits on consecutive audit firm engagements and ensuring charter/ordinance consistency.
- Procurement: recommended clarifying thresholds and competitive processes, and noted a state-level bill to raise public-works contracting thresholds from $100,000 to $250,000 was passed last year but vetoed by the governor; he advised carving out public-works procurement where state law already governs it (Title 36 and Title 32 references).
- Conflicts/ethics: recommended removing procurement-specific ethics language from the draft if the separate ethics ordinance is adopted to avoid duplication.

Strickland said staff will continue to refine the drafts so the ordinance and any associated policies can be ready for the Feb. 15 hearing and follow-up resolutions in January.

Next steps: staff will separate operational policy material from ordinance text, clean up statutory citations, and return revised drafts for public hearing and board consideration.