$20,000 in donations goes missing from Rohnert Park coffers

Rohnert Park is updating how it handles cash deposits after $20,000 in donations from a senior center account was found missing from the city’s coffers.

The incident was discovered in August 2022 while finance officials were reconciling accounts but wasn’t publicly disclosed until recently.

The city said in a March 1 news release the incident was reported to the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety, who turned over the investigation to Petaluma Police to avoid a conflict of interest.

City Manager Marcela Piedra said the police investigation is ongoing but could not say if any employees had been implicated.

It’s also not clear how or when the money was taken and Piedra declined to provide additional details, citing the open investigation.

“At this particular point in time, I can’t release more information because we don’t want to compromise the investigation,” she said.

The city is waiting for the investigation to be completed, hopefully in the next 30 to 45 days, to determine if disciplinary measures or other actions are necessary, she said.

A Petaluma Police Department spokesperson declined to comment on the case directing questions back to Piedra.

Piedra, who took over as the city’s top executive in January, said the inconsistency in the account, which helps pay for programming at the senior center, was discovered as city finance staff performed a cash reconciliation.

Finance officials reported the issue to Rohnert Park police shortly after, she said.

Cash donations brought to City Hall typically are received by staff and placed in a safe, but Piedra said employees reported after the discrepancy was discovered that the safe wasn’t locking properly.

Staffing shortages in the finance department led to delays in officials performing cash reconciliations, an accounting process in which internal balance sheets are checked against bank statements to ensure the balances match. So, she said, the missing funds weren’t immediately discovered.

“In cases like this when there are issues with cash being provided to the city, if you’re not on top of it, it’s hard to see or you don’t see it soon enough,” she said. “It’s like your checking account, if you don’t check it often enough, you’re going to miss things.”

The city has since updated how cash is collected and counted, including requiring that two employees be present while money is counted, and is examining other potential changes to its protocols.

City administrators are also looking to turn to technology to limit how much cash is handled by the city, though Piedra said she understands some residents may still prefer to pay bills and other city fees in cash.

“It’s unfortunate that it took this kind of incident, but we took a step back and looked at how we’re doing things to implement safeguards to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” she said. “It’s a lesson learned for us.”

Piedra said city administrators are currently conducting financial audits as part of the annual budget process that could identify other discrepancies but the city believes this was an isolated incident.

The Finance Department now has staff in place to conduct cash reconciliations on a more regular basis and that, along with annual audits, can help identify potential future concerns more quickly, she said.

Piedra said though the incident was discovered months ago the city wanted to be transparent with residents as the police investigation moves forward.

“We wanted to make sure we notified our community that this had occurred and that an investigation is ongoing,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Paulina Pineda at 707-521-5268 or paulina.pineda@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @paulinapineda22.