Letter: Vote yes on 2 to fix finance mess ‘as bad as it gets’

Posted 11/28/18

To the editor:

Westport must come together to approve $65,000 to hire a consultant to straighten out the most recent nice mess our Treasurer’s Office has gotten us into. According to an outside …

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Letter: Vote yes on 2 to fix finance mess ‘as bad as it gets’

Posted

To the editor:

Westport must come together to approve $65,000 to hire a consultant to straighten out the most recent nice mess our Treasurer’s Office has gotten us into. According to an outside auditor, we have a “material weakness in town controls” meaning that town bank accounts have not been “reconciled” since July 2017.

When I first heard those terms at the October 29 BOS meeting, I thought “oh.” When FinComm Vice Chairwoman Karen Raus said, “Not reconciling is the worst possible thing an auditor would say,” I thought, “Really? The absolute worst thing? Auditors are so civil.”

But as the town’s dire legal situation and extreme fiscal vulnerability were explained further, my mild first response rapidly metastasized into “Eeek!”

Several weeks later, still trying to wrap my art-major brain around the concept and importance of “account reconciliation,” I turned to Google and quickly found the following on thebalance.com:

Account reconciliation is the process of comparing transactions you have recorded using internal record-keeping for financial accounts against monthly statements from external sources—such as a bank, credit card company, or other financial institution—to ensure that your account records agree with each other.

Comparing transactions and balances is important because it avoids overdrafts on cash accounts, catches fraudulent or overcharged credit card transactions, explains timing differences, and highlights other negative activity such as stolen or incorrectly recorded income and expense entries. This will help catch improper spending and serious issues such as embezzlement.

As the auditor warned the town over a year ago, “Someone in India could be going through the town’s bank accounts and we wouldn’t even know.” Or someone in Nevada or Westport. And. We. Wouldn’t. Even. Know. It.

The incompetency of our Treasure’s Office is mind blowing, but we will deal with that soon enough. First, we must immediately hire outside competence to secure our hard-earned tax dollars and our town’s financial stability.

Vote “yes” on Article 2 at the emergency December 4 Town Meeting!

Constance Gee

Westport

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.