Saturday, October 25, 2014

Winchendon school board quizzes auditor on deficit

Winchendon school board quizzes auditor on deficit
By Paula J. Owen TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WINCHENDON — Auditors told the School Committee Thursday night that a crash in the town's accounting system, a lack of communication, double entries and inaccurate reports all led to a deficit the town is facing that the Department of Revenue estimates at $5.7 million.

After selectmen would not allow the School Committee to participate in a joint meeting last week with auditors from Roselli, Clark & Associates of Woburn to ask questions about a fiscal 2013 audit that uncovered deficits in several town departments, the School Committee asked the auditors to attend Thursday night's meeting. The firm is still working on fiscal 2014 and 2015.

Typically, appropriating deficits don't exist, but there were so many uncovered, auditors Tony Roselli and Chad Clark said, they need to find out why. Otherwise it could happen again, they said.

The men said the firm plans to investigate and ask all department heads if they were aware they had a deficit in their budgets and if they were aware what they had to spend, and base its findings on the answers.

No department heads contacted the firm after it sent out the fiscal 2013 audit July 20 to all departments in the town that were affected, Mr. Roselli said, to talk about the issues that were uncovered. The document was still a work in progress and could have been changed if they had received additional information, he said.

School Superintendent Salah E. Khelfaoui said the School Department did not receive the audit until September.

Moreover, the men said MUNIS — the town's accounting system — crashed and the crash caused permanent damage to the town's accounting records. Those records, Mr. Clark said, had to be rebuilt from prior records the town had available and printouts. Data entry was done to re-establish the records, he said.

Exacerbating the problem was a turnover in the town accountant's office, the auditors said.

Mr. Khelfaoui asked if the auditors had confidence in MUNIS because that is what the School Department was relying on to get its figures. The town does not communicate with the School Department on its accounts, he said. Town Accountant Donna Allard was asked to attend the meeting, but did not, according the superintendent.

School Committee members asked why there were no checks and balances in MUNIS and how checks could be written if money was not there.

"What is going on here, townwide, is there are not a lot of checks and balances employed," Mr. Clark said. "We're finding the process is broken. There was a process, but somewhere along the line it stopped being followed across a lot of boards. It used to happen, but something happened and things imploded over a lot of different departments. We have to move beyond the last two years."

"A lot of what happened was out of people's control," Mr. Roselli said. "It is time to extend the olive branch, stop bickering and fighting and solve this problem. Deficits are everywhere … people need to communicate."

He likened the situation to "finger pointing" since the deficits were reported to the "Twilight Zone" episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street."

"It needs to end," he said.

The auditors said they would meet with school officials Friday to go over documents the superintendent said they have that show the School Department did not overspend its accounts and the School Department was working with figures provided to it by MUNIS.

Contact Paula Owen at powen@telegram.com.

1 comment:

  1. MUNIS CRASHED? Have other towns who use this software had problems like this? Have the MUNIS support people warned if so others have had problems? Do the programs have backup to call the system whole and bulet proof?
    This sounds like the way Templetons issues started and with the changes with help how could the user not think about a backup for the backup offsite in case of fire or theft. This is 2014 not a time for another learning curve. This audit could be an eye opener for the way the state allows the accountants and treasurers to do the business of the taxpayers. Or is this like the IRS when you have a problem use the most common thing like hard drive crash and software failure. The fact that there are not multi offsite backups tells me "all" involved need to get some training in the prevention field. You can buy a 16 gig thumb drive for only 10.00 at Walmarts. A 1tb is down to 80-90 bucks so to hear this was not backed up with multi backups is a hard sell for me to believe. I hope the people in Winchendon have some people who will ask the hard questions and demand answers from the state and others under the watch for the last 3-5 years as this has unfolded.
    Winchendon need a blog to have the people to get connected and find the real answers to the questions. This could be a long winter in Winchendon wondering what realy happened. It's important the people get involved and keep an eye on the people who are running things to make sure this never happens again and ask why it won't or can't happen again.

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