Harlan Kirgan
A new lease purchase agreement for a computer network server is headed toward the Sept. 19 St. Landry Parish Council meeting.
The Council’s Administrative and Finance Committee approved sending the contract to the full meeting along with an agreement with information technology manager Shane Garrard.
The agreement with Garrard would be to end his services with parish government, Parish President Bill Fontenot said.
The server agreement is another move to fix a finding in an audit released in July that faulted parish government’s handling of the server lease-purchase.
Fontenot said the finding was discovered by Amanda Cain, finance director, and her staff before the audit report.
“We don’t owe as much as we thought we owed because there was payment made already. So, we are revising the lease agreement,” Fontenot said.
Fontenot said the final payment would be $25,000. The original total was $259,000.
The parish has paid $168,000 to date, Fontenot said.
In addition to what the parish government has paid, the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office has paid $64,000 for the server, Fontenot said.
Councilman Timmy Lejeune asked the parish president if the company, Allied Holding has agreed to the new contract.
“They said that they are going to check their numbers,” Fontenot said. “But we’ve checked them enough and the Legislative Auditor checked them enough and this is what the Legislative Auditor agrees with us that’s owed. So, it will be presented to the company in that light.”
Fontenot said Garrard owns Allied Holding.
“We are not going to pay beyond that $25,000...” he said.
The committee also requested a representative of Allied Holding be present at the Sept. 19 meeting.
Eunice Councilman Coby Clavier voted against the motion. Clavier said it was not necessary to have an Allied Holding representative present as a reason for his “No” vote.
Committee Chairman Wayne Ardoin asked the finance director if she was OK with the deal.
“Absolutely,” Cain replied.
Council legal advisor Garrett Duplechain said by February 2019 parish government will own the server.
“Allied will have done very well,” he said.
“What the owner of Allied’s final decision will be, I don’t know. I think we have a lot on our side as far as getting this agreement done,” Duplechain said.
Councilman Harold Taylor said he and others met with Garrard the previous week.
After Garrard billed the parish government $125 to adjust a microphone at a meeting, Taylor said, “I was outraged.”
That bill has been withdrawn, he said.
“My point is we’ve got to get a handle on this thing. We’ve got a $259,000 server ... that will serve the state of Louisiana, all of the departments in the state, the 303 municipalities of the 64 parishes and half of the state of Texas. I don’t think we need anything that big,” Taylor said.
Parish government failed to follow bid law when it entered into a lease or purchased data servers, Steve Moosa, CPA, said at the July audit presentation.
“Based on the dollar amount, we should have procured those just like a bid law. That was not done when this lease was entered into.” Fontenot said, “We did report it. We self-reported to the legislative auditor, and we were under the understanding that it was procured with an RFP.”
Moosa said, “There was no documentation maintained to show that the procurement has occurred.” The lease agreement was for five years and that requires state bond commission approval, Moosa said.
“It came to our attention during the audit that part of that contract was paid for by another government agency, and therefore that should have been reflected in the lease agreement contract, but it was not noted there,” Moosa said. “In the findings, the lease of about $265,000, about $64,000 was previously paid by another government agency, and it appears that there may be some duplications in expenditures.”
“We are two years into that lease, so all monies have not been expended yet, but this needs to be addressed before that contract is cleared,” he said.
Fontenot said Garrard has made assurances the transition from him to a new IT manager would be smooth.