The City of Irving recognizes the concerns of its residents regarding its policies for reimbursement of expenses to consultants. The City is committed to, and has been recognized for its financial management practices, and continually identifies opportunities for improvement.
The City has taken aggressive steps to enhance its system of checks and balances when processing consultant expense payments, to hold consultants more accountable for request for expense reimbursements. The current policy requires the submission of receipts for reimbursement of consultant expenses and is uniformly and consistently applied to new agreements. However, it is not applicable to the 2009 agreement made with Heritage District LLC that does not require receipts for reimbursement requests.
As an added level of accountability to the Heritage Crossing Development, a project management team was created to provide comprehensive oversight.
While there is more work to be done, the environment is conducive to economic development and redevelopment, which is evident by the 19 new businesses that have established a presence in Heritage Crossing since 2006. Residents and property owners, in this development, can celebrate a 35 percent reduction in crime. This can largely be attributed to the removal of six dangerous and substandard multifamily complexes.
As we proceed with our work to make the vision for this development a reality, we will continue strengthening our policies for responsible financial management and fiscal transparency.
