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September 2, 2011 <br />Pam Dubois <br />Cabarrus County <br />65 Church Street SE <br />Concord, NC 28025 <br />Dear Ms. Dubois, <br />It has been a pleasure to provide audit services to Cabarrus County for the past several <br />years. We are looking forward to a long relationship with the County that will allow us <br />to become more efficient in our procedures and offer even better management <br />suggestions as a result of our knowledge of the County's operations. <br />The audit relationship is much more than a commodity product, therefore, the Local <br />Government Commission does not require the services to be re -bid at the end of a service <br />agreement We are proud of the level of service we offer and believe that to be the <br />reason we have a near 100% renewal rate with our government clients. We would rather <br />negotiate an extension of our agreement rather than subject the relationship to the bidding <br />process. If t he County is pleased with the service then fees are the only va riable, and I <br />am certain we can come to terms as it relates to fees. <br />In the past few years, much talk has been made about mandatory auditor rotations. This <br />concept, in fact, is related to the audit team, not the audit firm. We are required by our <br />auditing standards to maintain our independence, and we can assure the County that <br />Martin Starnes & Associates takes compliance with the independence standard seriously. <br />We rotate our audit teams as a normal course of business due to staff growth. We re- <br />invent the audit process on each year during the planning stage to make sure we are <br />addressing the pertinent risk areas of the County's audit. Quite frankly, we study trends, <br />and, therefore, a long audit relationship, if managed properly, is a great benefit to the <br />County. <br />Attachment number 1 <br />F -3 Page 28 <br />