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.