Councilwoman Cerina Otero grilled the city Finance Director at Monday’s Ceres City Council meeting about why she recommended a three-year contract with a firm that failed the city previously.

The council went on to approve the agreement with MuniServices LLC at a cost of $9,825.

The firm was not handling business licenses for the city in an efficient manner, Otero reminded Finance Director Shannon Esenwein for she wondered why they were being chosen to audit sales, use and transaction taxes and correct complex sales tax misallocations and recovering lost revenues resulting from reporting errors. MuniServices has found some taxes from Ceres businesses that were erroneously paid to the city of Modesto due to confusion relating to parts of the north part of Ceres having a Modesto mailing address.

Esenwein explained that she the audits will come from a different division of the same company.

“We’ve had no issues with their timeliness or their information they’ve provided to us,” explained Esenwein. “They provide us a quarterly report, and then we meet with them quarterly as well to go over that report and to talk about any upcoming businesses, and the potential sales tax impact to our agency.”

She said another company was looked into but their costs were higher.

Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra also voiced concerns, saying “I’m just trying to figuring out why we’re using a company that suddenly canceled on us, raised rates, and literally forced us at a council meeting to change with no notice whatsoever.”

Esenwein said she remains comfortable with MuniServices even though the company dropped the ball on collecting business license fees for the city.E

After the brief discussion, the council approved the agreement in a 4-1 vote, with Vierra opposing.