01.21.25 MEETING MINUTES - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council Tuesday, January 21, 2025 Page 3 Open Portion — For Public Comment (5-minute limit imposed by Chair) Council President Schutt stated, if anyone wishes to speak, please come up to the podium and state your name and address for the record. There were none. Department Head Reports: Diane Wolgamuth (Administration) — Thank you, Council President. Reporting for Citizen's Advisory, the Committee will be meeting next Monday at 7:00 p.m. On the agenda is a discussion with Service Director Frank Stupczy and the Executive Assistant Lisa Lesner. They are going to talk about some departmental updates and initiatives they are doing there. That will include the changes we recently made to the Animal Warden policy. That's all I have. Council President Schutt stated, thank you Ms. Wolgamuth. Any questions? There were none. Dan Russell (Building Department) — Thank you, Council President. I will be reporting on the December 17th BZA meeting and the January 91h ARB meeting. For the BZA meeting, we received one application for a rear -yard setback for a deck. That was deferred to the February meeting. For the ARB meeting, we received one application for the concrete barriers at Progressive. That was approved. That's all I have Council President Schutt asked, any questions? There were none. Council President Schutt stated, thank you, Mr. Russell. Ms. Rich (Finance Department) - Thank you Council President. I just have a couple of things to speak on. The Mayor asked me to speak about the Finance Department's internal controls over electronic payments in light of the $619,000 theft that you may have read about regarding a fraudulent scheme payment involving Orange City Schools. I don't know all the exact details of how the fraud occurred but what ended up happening is they sent the money to the wrong vendor, to a bad actor. What probably happened is someone at the school changed the payment vendor information without verifying if they should have. It is costing them $619,000. 1 think there is still an investigation going on. The Mayor asked me to share the process the Finance Department does when we receive a request like this. The number one thing you do is you actually call the vendor and talk to the accounting department and you say I received this request to change your account number. Can you verify that? That's the easiest way to stop this fraud. This type of fraud is on the rise. The bad actors are getting really good at it. That's why everyone had to take the fraud training from the Auditor of State's office. I believe that training is going to only increase. Unfortunately so is our cyber-insurance costs because these things continue to happen.