Village officials have made some, and are planning other, significant changes with the Oak Brook Golf Club Pro Shop, following an investigation into discrepancies found recently with inventory there.
As part of the accountability program established by the current Village Board, village staff conducted a planned and physical inventory of the golf pro shop merchandise on Aug. 14. Transactions were reviewed from the purchase/sales cycle in order to identify differences between the book inventory quantities and the physical inventory count, Village Manager Greg Summers said.
He said the review revealed systemic issues resulting in substantial inconsistencies in the inventory count dating back at least a decade. These issues were previously identified in an October 2016 report commissioned by the village; however, the results of that prior report went unheeded.
The investigation showed more than $214,000 of missing, aged unsaleable, and excess inventory, Summers said.
“The costs of any missing inventory have been absorbed by the village’s Sports Core fund and then unfairly passed through to all of our facility users,” he said. “Significant personnel, policy, and inventory process revisions have already been implemented to stop this problem in its tracks.”
Additional suggested measures are included in a report completed by village staff, among those are that an annual inventory of all assets in the golf pro shop should be conducted and documented.
In addition, the reports suggests that village administration should evaluate and determine which employees should have the authority to order merchandise on behalf of the golf pro shop and that the shop should not have unlimited authority to order merchandise, and purchases by the golf pro shop must be justified.
Also, the golf pro shop should work with the village administration to regulate who should determine the selling price of the merchandise and how the merchandise should be valued. This includes the sales price of older and discontinued merchandise. The report also suggests that a policy for proper cash handling should be established.
“Every employee of the village, including those at the golf club, are expected to be accountable, ethical, and transparent in the performance of their duties,” Summers said.
Village President Larry Herman said when he ran in April for Village President, he promised the community greater accountability and transparency.
“For too long, business as usual allowed deficit spending throughout the Sports Core,” he said. “With heightened accountability, this board and I have worked to turn around every operation at the Sports Core to be revenue positive, thereby ensuring the ability to maintain the integrity of the Sports Core at no cost to our taxpayers.”
Longtime Village Board member Michael Manzo, who is a board liaison to the village’s Sports Core Advisory Committee, said keeping a tighter rein on Sports Core inventory and spending has been a long time coming.
“Former Trustee Don Adler and I have been calling for an investigation into the golf club pro shop and Sports Core operations overall for nearly a decade, and those calls for action went unheeded in the past,” he said.
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“Thankfully, under a new administration, this village manager and assistant village manager took that request and their responsibilities seriously, scheduled an inventory and followed through, finally bringing to light the serious accountability and inventory issues that have plagued the golf club as far back as we have electronic records.”
Summers said that while the investigation identified a systemic issue regarding the lack of internal controls to safeguard merchandise purchased with public funds and the failure to take action to remedy those known issues by the former head golf pro, prior administrations, and prior Village Boards, the report does not seek to identify the source of significant losses. That matter is subject to a separate active criminal investigation by the Oak Brook Police Department, he said.
“The reason that the police investigation remains separate is that it is imperative that the police department be allowed to thoroughly investigate criminal activity independently, unencumbered and uninfluenced by administration or the Village Board,” Summers said.
Chuck Fieldman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.