2005-01-06-AC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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January 6, 2005 c. Water and Sewer (W&S). (1) John B. reported: The W&S committee voted to recommend that W&S enterprise funds adopt standardized financial reporting consisting of an annual operating statement, statement of cash flows, and balance sheet prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The committee also discussed the advisability of creating a financial- officer position to oversee financial and accounting aspects of the W&S enterprise funds, the costs of which would be borne by the funds themselves. The W&S committee voted to ask for a legal opinion on PILOTs. John B. does not expect that the legal issues will be resolved, or that any final recommendations will be made about PILOTs, in time to affect the FY 2006 budget. The special audit of W&S enterprise billing issues is still pending. Deborah said that the auditors are coming down to the same place as John B.: there appear to be significant errors in accounts receivable. This means that the significant drop in cash reserves in the W&S enterprise funds cannot be explained by a spike in receivables resulting from inadequate collection efforts. There will be another report from the auditors. Deborah expressed concern to Town Manager Linda Vine that the auditing work is not considering the whole problem. It is not enough just to write off inaccurate receivables. We need to know why the W&S revenues for FY04 are significantly off from prior years, whether the data–management issues that resulted in excessive billings for some accounts might also have led to inadequate billings for other accounts, and whether there are implications for the adequacy of the rates recently set for FY05. (2) The Appropriation Committee agreed that Deborah and John B. should arrange to meet with John Ryan and others as they deem appropriate to try to get resolution on these issues. d. Utility Committee. Eric reported the Utility Committee is still waiting for the State Legislature to pass a bill to allow municipalization of utilities. The bill did not pass in 2004. Now the committee is working on getting a new bill or a home-rule petition. e. Municipal Finance. David and Deborah reported. John Ryan is working 4 days a week thru mid March as acting Finance Director and Comptroller. There will be an ad in the January 8 Boston Globe for a new person. Linda Vine will recommend that the same selection committee do the screening for the Board of Selectmen. Linda plans to advertise for one or two more positions, in the absence of Michael DiPietro, former Assistant Finance Director, and pending news of Laura Delollio’s Page 2 of 4