City auditor: solid-waste operations have implemented 19 of 20 recommendations

Madison Rorschau, Denton’s city auditor, presented a follow-up review of the Solid Waste Operations audits and said the department has implemented 19 of 20 prior recommendations. “We found that 19 of the 20 originally issued recommendations are implemented with 1 in progress,” Rorschau said.

The follow-up credited improvements including a ScaleHouse procedures manual to document and review voided or altered transactions, a streamlined monthly credit-account billing process with retained applications, and training checklists to track required cash-handling and operational training. Rorschau told council the department centralized retention of training records and has begun implementing a SCADA system to reduce handwritten environmental data collection.

Councilmember questions focused on performance metrics and reporting. A councilmember asked whether the follow-up measured time-to-complete customer transactions at the ScaleHouse; Rorschau said that specific metric was not part of the review and deferred operational timing questions to staff.

Why it matters: better transaction documentation and centralized records reduce risk of billing errors and fraud. Rorschau noted that Texas Commission on Environmental Quality inspections in 2025 found no permit violations at the landfill. The auditor said the single outstanding recommendation will be included in an informal follow-up in fiscal year 2027.

What’s next: staff will provide additional operational metrics (time-to-complete data) to council on request; the SCADA rollout and the remaining recommendation will be monitored in next year’s follow-up.