A June report from the Colorado Springs City Auditor’s Office raises additional concerns about Mayor Yemi Mobolade’s use of his city-owned vehicle and new issues about him asking city staff to watch his kids during and after work hours.

The report says that city auditors interviewed seven city employees who said they felt “implicitly obligated” to watch Mobolade’s children during those days and “did not feel positioned to decline the request.” The auditor’s office, under Natalie Lovell, is tasked with evaluating the city’s financial and policy actions as well as investigating allegations of waste and abuse of city resources.

The audit does not name Mobolade, but the details about his previous use of a city vehicle and biographical details line up with the mayor.

The report detailed one instance in July 2025 when a staff member watched his kids in a construction trailer off to the side of an event. Another staff member said they volunteered to watch Mobolade’s kids after work one day and then felt “an expectation to continue” watching them on other days.

“As any parent with school-aged children can attest, there are rare occasions for which my children have accompanied me to work functions. I never intended for there to be a perception or expectation that supervising my children was a responsibility of any staff,” Mobolade said in a written statement.

The incident last July was estimated to cost the city around $380 based on the value of the employee’s time.

“Since the City or staff does not maintain records of these occurrences, including dates, duration or the amount of staff time involved, the total impact cannot be quantified,” the audit stated.

The report stated that there is no rule in place for Colorado Springs elected officials regarding child supervision, so the actions were not technically an ethical violation. The audit report recommended that the city enact a policy for the mayor and City Council that mirrored the “Visitors in the Workplace” policy for other city employees.

That policy said that visitors, including family members, cannot disrupt operations or be left with employees other than the person they are visiting. Department leaders can be exempted from this rule if they receive clearance from human resources.

The audit also raised new concerns about Mobolade’s use of his city-owned vehicle. A previous audit report released in April flagged instances where Mobolade and his wife have both used a city-owned vehicle to take personal trips.

The June audit reported two additional personal trips Mobolade had taken outside Colorado Springs, one to Monument last year and one to Denver in November 2024. It also found that the trip Mobolade took to Crested Butte in March, which he later reimbursed the city for, covered around 400 more miles than the mayor originally stated.

Based on the policy that Mobolade put in place after the initial audit, which required him or other elected officials to reimburse the city based on the IRS mileage rate, the audit estimated that he owed the city an additional $425 in mileage reimbursement for those trips.

The audit report stated that staff used telematics data to take a deeper look into Mobolade’s trips across Colorado Springs while in office. In the weeks since the new reimbursement rule was enacted on May 7, auditors estimated that Mobolade had driven 60 miles that were not strictly work trips and should reimburse the city an additional $45.

Mobolade wrote in his statement that the policy he enacted in May was a strong step to keep issues like this from returning and that he would use similar telematics data to track his mileage in the future.

In his statement, Mobolade also questioned why the mileage issue has become such a priority for the auditor’s office.

“More than 1,700 hours of planned audit work remain delayed or backlogged, and our City Auditor is several months behind on key audits that residents and I have asked for,” Mobolade wrote. He cited potential audits on the city’s homeless outreach resources and the privacy questions around Colorado Springs Police Department technology.

City Council President Lynette Crow-Iverson said in a statement Monday that the audit findings “warrant public attention and accountability” and that actions should be taken quickly to handle the concerns.

Councilmember Dave Donelson was more pointed, saying the mayor’s behavior reported in the audit was wrong and troubling. Donelson said that the continued issues with city vehicle use and mileage reporting showed that Mobolade’s new policy was not effective.

“It was something of an integrity check — do you report your mileage accurately (on a city vehicle you are using for personal use unlike any previous mayor) when you don’t realize it can be checked?” Donelson wrote about the audit.

The auditor’s office released three other audit reports in June, which checked the police department’s evidence inventory, the city’s procurement services division and the 2025 spending on roads through the 2C ballot measure.