T-L Photo/J.D. LONG Harrison County Economic Development Director Nick Homrighausen and John Jones, president pro tem for the Harrison County Community Improvement Corp., conduct a scaled-down meeting Tuesday afternoon inside the Puskarich Public Library in Cadiz.

CADIZ – The Harrison County Community Improvement Corp. held its first meeting of the year before a scaled-down crowd at the Puskarch Public Library in Cadiz on Tuesday.

Member John Jones sat in as president pro tem in the absence of President Dale Arbough and Vice President Bob Hendricks.

The meeting lasted less than 20 minutes, but a few items carried over from the last meeting of 2021, including financial statements prepared by Charles Harris & Associates. Grant administrator Jody Hennis reminded members that the Ohio Auditor’s Office was not satisfied with the work the firm did for the CIC in preparing financial statements for 2020 and 2021.

Hennis began by telling them it was time to sign the $625 contract with Harris. Economic Development Director Nick Homrighausen raised a question, recalling that at one time, the CIC was not pleased with Harris’ work..

“Is there an option?” Homrighasen asked, but Hennis said other options were “completely” out of the CIC’s price range. She said there was no time to send the matter out to bid as the statements are due the second week of February.

Hennis said her contact in the state auditor’s office hoped the CIC would be able to keep tabs on how the financial statements are being prepared.

“She felt we would be better able to maybe monitor what the issues were previously,” Hennis said of the information she received from the state.

Homrighausen again pointed out that at one time, the board was not pleased with how things were going. Hennis acknowledged that and said if there was more time and “more of a choice” that things would be different in terms of having financial statements prepared.

Board member Dave Wheeler made a motion to go ahead with the contract with the caveat that the board receive a “bulleted list of what those items were that we were not happy with.”

Jones told the board of his interaction with CH&A, noting that the fee had been raised from what the CIC had originally been told.

“And it was due to the fact that they couldn’t find a contract, which was not in our office, it was at the courthouse. And I told them we would pay it under protest,” Jones reminded the board.

He said CH&A spent approximately eight hours searching for a contract the CIC did not have in its possession.

“It was not our fault that they could not find that contract,” Jones said. “So, I didn’t feel that we should pay for the extra time that was spent hunting that contract when it was not in our office. It probably should have been in our office but it wasn’t.”

Jones pointed out that the state auditor had recommended the Harris firm to the CIC but became unhappy with the results.

The state auditor’s office told the CIC to stay with CH&A for those two years, according to Hennis, basically tying the CIC’s hands.

“So when you recommend someone and then you don’t like the way they do things, it’s not quite right to maybe post a finding against the CIC whenever we done everything according to what we were told to do,” Jones said. “I mean, for the amount of stuff that we run through that office, I think that we had a very, very good audit through the whole deal.”

Wheeler’s motion to enter into the contract with CH&A passed unanimously.