observermedia

Observer Media - The Home of the Wareham and Tri-Town Observer	Welcome Visitor Fri, Sep 10, 2010 7 people currently online.
	Get Your Online Subscription Today!!

Back

FrontPage News

Spinney Library project breaks ground

Town: "Friends" accounting practices questionable

Town Administrator Mark Andrews has cancelled the monthly book sale of the Friends of the Wareham Free Library after Town Accountant Elizabeth Zaleski determined that prior sales did not follow “proper accounting practices and procedures.”

An investigation by the Observer has also discovered that the Friends have made no gift donations to the Wareham Free Library since January of 2009. Records within the town treasurer/collector’s office confirm that.

This information comes on the heels of a controversial fund-raising drive conducted by the Friends on a Facebook Page titled "Wareham Free Library." At the end of January the administrator of the Facebook page, who banned the Observer from the page for asking who was running it, claimed two anonymous donors would offer a dollar-for-dollar match for every new “fan” the page acquired. Such an effort should have brought the Wareham Free Library at least $3,000.
The page administrator made the following post during the fund-raising drive: “This effort will buy books for the Wareham Free Library. Our library needs the support. It's wonderful to read your comments about what the library has meant to you and your families over the years.”

In response to a question posed by a “fan” of the Facebook page on Tuesday about who operates the page, the page administrator wrote “This page exists to support and promote the Wareham Free Library, its programs and services. It is maintained in that spirit by member(s) of the Friends. It is not intended to be a political forum. It is a way to support and communicate about events, programs etc. at the library. This page offers support for libraries, reading, and in particular our own Wareham Free Library. This is a good thing, dear readers.”
Town officials said the Facebook page is not affiliated with the town in any way.

A week after the fund-raising effort, the Friends finally broke ground on renovations on the Spinney Memorial Library after years of unexplained delays. The Friends hope the town accepts the Spinney Library as a branch of the Wareham Free Library. Until then it will be run by volunteers, according to media reports.

The fund-raising efforts relating to the Spinney project has been the source of controversy in Wareham for several years. The Inspector General’s office is currently conducting an investigation in part to determine if all the funding was legally acquired.

Nora Bicki, a spokesperson from the Friends, does not respond to inquires made by the Observer. But she made the following post on a local web site on Wednesday: “I get them not letting us have a sale, but I don't get the way it was handled. Of course, I'm no longer shocked when I see such examples of bad management and decision making - this is only my opinion.”

Last week, before the sale was canceled, Bicki wrote “Now I hope that the Acting Director will fill out one of the forms she insisted we create to ask us to purchase books and materials with the money we earned from the Holiday Fair, the Facebook page donation and the proceeds of this book sale because if we don't meet the requirements, we won't get certified next year. And we all know the Friends are Friendly folks, but we can't make any purchases anymore without the new forms and a request from the AD.”

Acting Library Director Marcia Griswold called Bicki’s claim “nonsense.”

“The town doesn’t require anyone to fill out any forms to donate to the library,” she said. “All I asked is for any donations from the Friends to be put in writing so we can have a record of it. That’s standard procedure. That’s the way it happened when I created a Friends group at another library.”

Andrews confirmed that the town requires no forms for donations.

“I have no knowledge of such a thing,” he said.

Bicki has repeatedly claimed that the Friends turned over $40,000 in receipts for books and materials purchased by the Friends for the Wareham Free Library last year. The town treasurer’s office has no record of any such donation being made.

According to Andrews, the newly appointed Board of Library Trustees will now oversee fund-raising efforts on behalf of the public library.

“The trustees need to set the goals and the agenda for the library,” Andrews said. “If they want the Friends of the Wareham Free Library to assist in fund-raising efforts they need to work together with an eye toward serving the public. We are making certain that proper accounting practices and procedures are being followed during fund-raising efforts on behalf of the Wareham Free Library. That doesn’t appear to have always been the case.”

Andrews would not elaborate on that comments, instead saying “We ask the same of all our boards and commissions. We need to make sure all board and committees are following sound business practices and accounting procedures that have to adhere to the standards set by the town accountant.”

Andrews met with the new Board of Library Trustees on Feb. 9. He said it will be up to the board to determine the best fund-raising practices relating to the library, providing those practices meet town-wide standards.

Read More ...
Robert Slager - 22 opinions posted

Final report: Health Care Trust Fund just fine

    Well, it’s official. The Health Care Trust Fund has a $2.4 million surplus and not the $1.9 million deficit projected by the Finance Committee and an auditor hired last summer by the School Committee.
    Citing “material weaknesses in the accounting process,” Jim Powers of the CPA Firm Powers & Sullivan said the town’s Health Care Trust Fund is actually in excellent shape and will allow the town to absorb any increases in claims for several years.
    “I don’t think anything was done purposefully,” Powers said. “It was just sloppy accounting.”
    Powers was hired by the town last fall to offer a full report on the state of the trust fund. In 2004 the town decided to become self-insured, paying 75 percent toward the health insurance of town employees, with those employees picking up the remaining 25 percent. Last summer Geoff Swett, a School Committee members and a board member of the political group Citizens for a Better Wareham, claimed the town wasn’t maintaining the 75-25 ration as required by state law. After bringing his concerns to both the Finance Committee and the School Committee, the School Committee decided to hire the local accounting firm of Claude Boudwin LLC to audit the fund. Boudwin determined that employees were owed $1.9 million because employees had overpaid that amount to the fund over a four-year period.
    Powers said that isn’t what actually happened. Because of poor accounting procedures conducted by former town accounting Robert Bliss (who as fired by the town last year for an unrelated matter), employee contributions were mistakenly inflated on the books. Reimbursements from insurance companies, grant funding and other revenue sources were listed as employee contributions for an unknown reason, giving the fund the appearance that employees were overpaying.
    Powers called the audit performed by Boudwin “a simplistic review.”
     “Some of these things would have been discovered if you dug deep,” Powers said. “However, a lot of this was self-evident.”
    The town had used Boudwin to audit all its books for several years but parted ways with him last spring. Several selectmen have questioned the wisdom of the School Committee for hiring an auditor to determine what mistakes he may have made when he initially audited the Health Care Trust Fund for the town.
    The School Committee had been invited by selectmen to attend Power’s presentation Tuesday night at the Multi-Service Center. The School Committee declined the invitation. Members of the Finance Committee did attend.
    A great deal of panic had been generated by Boudwin’s initial report. FinCom Chairman Dick Paulsen made a post on a local web site, demanding that selectmen apologize to every town employee for not acting sooner to address the “problem.” Paulsen also recommended that the town immediately issue checks to those employees to compensate them for the alleged $1.9 deficit. Paulsen, along with fellow FinCom member Marilyn Donahue (also a board member for the Citizens for a Better Wareham), had staged a press conference prior to a selectmen’s meeting last year. They both strongly criticized the selectmen as well as then acting town administrator John Sanquinet for failing to take immediate action to rectify the situation.
   Members of the Take Back Wareham political group, an offshoot of the Citizens for a Better Wareham, had accused the Board of Selectmen on a local web site of stealing from the fund.
    Following Power’s presentation on Tuesday, the majority of the members of the FinCom offered personal apologies to Sanquinet for the criticism he endured during the trust fund controversy. They thanked him for keeping a “cool head” while panic raged around him.
    Paulsen and Donahue offered no words of contrition.
    Near the close of his presentation, Powers indicated that the actual ratio of town to employee contributions into the Health Care Trust Fund was 74.9 to 25.1 percent, a negligible amount of $45,465 that can easily be balanced with the $2.4 million surplus (the surplus was created because contributions to the fund far exceeded claims over the past four years). Powers said many self-insured communities see minor fluctuations from year-to-year.
    “You have no need to be concerned,” Powers said. “You have a nice surplus position.”
    Powers said given the lack of accounting procedures in place it was blind luck that the ratio turned out to be so close to 75-25.
     Bruce Sauvageau, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said he doesn’t believe in luck when it comes to financial matters.
    “It may be the work on an excellent town accountant,” Sauvageau said of Elizabeth Zaleski, who was hired to replace Bliss last year. It was Zaleski’s independent research that initially brought the $1.9 million deficit claim into question.
    Sauvageau said the amount the town spent on the audit ($30,000) may have saved taxpayers $4 million.
    “By not rushing to judgment, cooler heads prevailed,” he said.
    Selectman Brenda Eckstrom took a parting shot at Paulsen, saying if the town had panicked and immediately issued checks to all employees, the town would be facing a $2 million deficit right now. She also thanked Sanguinet for keeping his head when “two boards and town employees wanted your head.”

Read More ...
By Robert Slager - 4 opinions posted