The City Auditor’s Office (Office) conducts performance audits and reviews of City departments, programs, and services. Performance audits provide the City Council, City management, and the public with independent and objective information regarding the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of City programs and activities. The Office coordinates the annual citizen survey and issues the annual City of Palo Alto Service Efforts and Accomplishments report summarizing costs, workload, and performance results for City services with selected data for the last five years.

The Office contracts with an independent certified public accountant for the City’s annual external financial audit. The Office also conducts and coordinates revenue monitoring in areas such as sales and use tax, property tax, transient occupancy tax and utility user’s tax.

Each fiscal year, the Office presents an annual audit work plan for City Council approval. The Office reports quarterly to the City Council on the status of audit projects and annually on the status of open audit recommendations.

Our audit reports are public documents. Note the “Revision Date” on our web site is the “Issue Date” of the report.

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