Winchendon residents hammer town manager on $4M deficit

Winchendon residents hammer town manager on $4M deficit
By Paula J. Owen TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WINCHENDON — At Monday night's meeting of the Board of Selectmen, several residents hammered the town manager on the timeline of events leading up to the cumulative deficit of nearly $4 million the town is facing, asking what his role was in overseeing the budget and how it could go unnoticed for months.

Theresa M. Pfeifle, a lifelong resident with an accounting background, wanted to know about accountability measures and asked Town Manager James M. Kreidler Jr. how often reporting was done by the former town accountant.

"As town manager, you must have worked hand-in-hand with the town accountant," she said. "What was your role in overseeing town departments? Did you go down line items and say, 'We're over-budgeted on this,' and talk to department heads?"

Mr. Kreidler responded that the former accountant did not regularly provide him with monthly reports. Her reports were "sporadic," he said. Moreover, the health insurance trust was off, he said, not the operating budget.


Auditors previously said 13 "catastrophic" insurance claims in an 18-month period led to the deficit in the health insurance trust. The town is self-insured, but is switching to premium-based in January.

Ms. Pfeifle asked how so many large claims against the account could have gone unnoticed.

"That should have been seen at some point," she said.

Residents Felicia Nermsun and Danielle Hart asked why the town waited until 13 catastrophic health insurance claims came in to consider switching back to premium-based.

Ms. Nermsun said employers can tell by the injury what the level of claim is going to be and project costs.

"Whose responsibility is that to follow up on all these catastrophic claims and not take any action?" she said.

Mr. Kreidler said it should and would have been seen, but the former accountant became ill and there was only a part-time assistant working in the accounting office until Town Accountant Donna Allard came on board.

The women also grilled Mr. Kreidler on when the "crash" in the MUNIS financial software reported by auditors occurred. MUNIS is used by the town and School Department.

Mr. Kreidler said he does not have the ability to transfer funds or shuffle accounts, and deferred the question to the Ms. Allard, who said it happened in November before she came in during a "conversion."

Ms. Allard said the previous town accountant said she had difficulty with the MUNIS software company when she told them about the crash, she said.

"In the conversion, something went wrong," she said.

Ms. Allard said the town had to manually recreate and reconstruct data from hard documents.

Now, the town's financial data is backed up, she said.

Selectmen held the meeting to schedule a special town meeting and special election to deal with the deficit.

Selectmen continued Monday night's meeting to Thursday at 7:30 p.m. while awaiting clearer figures from auditors and the Department of Revenue. The town has to provide the DOR with a plan to deal with the deficit by Friday. The special town meeting is scheduled for Nov. 24 and the election for Dec. 20.

Contact Paula Owen at powen@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @PaulaOwenTG