The City of Moscow is auditing Time Warner to ensure they are paying the full amount of fees required to the city.
Don Palmer, City of Moscow finance director, said Pullman recently completed an audit of Time Warner and recovered $20,000 as a result.
Time Warner is considered a utility, so fees collected are considered franchise fees.
“Several of the utilities in the City of Moscow have to pay franchise fees for rights to use the streets and easements in the city,” Palmer said. “I just finished a city audit to save money, so now I just started to look at revenue side.”
The audit was on the agenda with the city council until Monday, when Palmer said there was an interesting turn of events.
“(It was) pulled from the agenda because a person who did Pullman’s said ‘why don’t we save some money and do this ourselves,'” Palmer said.
He said Dina Gibb, a representative from Time Warner, will now conduct the audit. But this doesn’t mean it will not be conducted by a firm later on.
“We will see what this produces, and if we are not satisfied, I’ll contact Lewis,” Palmer said. Lewis and Associates was slated to conduct the audit for the city.
The reason there is not a standard procedure for audits is because this is the first revenue audit for Moscow, he said.
“Here is what is common,” Palmer said. “Cities grow though annexations and we sent the utilities that information, but the utilities don’t look at them and so then the city doesn’t get the money from those annexes, so we are asking to look at that.”
Katy Sword can be reached at [email protected]