Police soon to review financial records
Read more: Local, Business, Crime, Community
GAYLORD -- It could soon be known whether the former director of the Gaylord Downtown Development Authority will face any charges for alleged mishandling of funds.
“We needed to discover if there were funds taken, and if so, how much,” said Joseph Duff, Gaylord city manager.
For five months now, investigators from the Michigan State Police have been working to determine whether there was any wrong doing in the way former Gaylord Downtown Development Authority Director Sherrie Schuster handled hundreds of thousands of dollars in DDA funding.
Late last week accounting firm Plante & Moran completed a forensics audit of the DDA’s budget and is now expected to present its findings to investigators the first week of April.
“The purpose of the forensics audit is to basically take a look at everything and we need to document everything in that audit report so in the event there’s a determination of a dollar amount that’s been taken, we have to be able to substantiate that,” Duff said.
After presenting all of the information, it would then be up to the Otsego County prosecutor to determine if any formal charges would be made, which is expected by the end of April.
A financial audit was also done on the records of the Michigan Downtown Association where Schuster held a treasurer position until her resignation from the Gaylord DDA.
Despite the on going investigation, Duff says the DDA continues to operate as normal, still planning events and working to improve the downtown business district.
“We’ve been conducting business as usual,” Duff said. “Some of the things we’ve been working on, we’ve already attained and set our concert schedule for the upcoming year, we’re in the process of hiring a new market manager for the downtown farmers market.”
