T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY State Auditor Rob Sand recently completed his report on the city of Le Grand for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, and recommended that the city terminate a lease agreement with a landowner in exchange for not charging the owner utilities.

LE GRAND — State Auditor Rob Sand recently released his report on the city of Le Grand for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, and most of the findings and recommendations were relatively routine for small communities. Sand did, however, express concern with an agreement between the city and a resident where the city leases land on the resident’s property, and in turn, the resident is not billed for utilities.

“This is not an appropriate arrangement because it understates the water and sewer funds receipts and fund balances by not requiring payment for utility usage and understates the disbursements and overstates the fund balance in the fund where the lease payments should be made from,” Sand wrote.

The resident is not identified in Sand’s report. Le Grand City Clerk Kylee Stone told the T-R there have been discussions about revisiting or changing the agreement, but no action has been taken yet. Sand also spoke to the newspaper following the release of the findings and said the current agreement is “just not the right way to do business.”

“It’s less of a concern about any sort of fraud, and it’s not a concern, really, about any sort of misspent money. The fundamental problem is, number one, it messes up the accounting, and number two, it’s basically a variable lease,” he said. “Because if you think about it, the value of that lease depends on how much you’re using in utilities, and that’s not the right way to make an agreement because it would be vulnerable to exploitation.”

His recommendation, he added, was to bill the resident for utilities like everyone else and sign a lease for whatever the land is worth. Sand also urged anyone with concerns, questions or something they feel his office should take a harder look at to contact him.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.