BLOOMINGDALE — Dean Montroy, the new town supervisor for St. Armand, wants to be open about addressing the deficiencies in the town’s accounting procedures.

Several problems were found by a 2017 audit conducted by the state comptroller’s office and made public last November. Town residents were invited to a special workshop session on Tuesday, when Montroy went through the corrective action plan and took questions from the audience and the council.

Former town Supervisor Charles Whitson signed the plan in October 2017, and Montroy, who was a councilperson at that time, said many of the new procedures are now already in place. However, he sought input from his council to amend town practices for billing for water and sewer service, and past mistakes in distributing the sales tax disbursement from the county. The supervisor referred to each issue as “a can of worms” and told the council members it would be up to them to decide how deeply the accountant should dig into town records to fix them.

The town now has a new accountant, Tina Moody, and new software that keeps track of water and sewer billing. The comptroller’s audit noted that the water and sewer clerk had not been reporting the payments it received for sewer and water services to the town’s accountant. In a conversation with the Enterprise after the meeting, town Clerk Barbara Darrah said the audit report was incorrect and that she had been reporting the payments to the accountant all along, but that the payments had not been reconciled with the town’s accounts. Going forward, any discrepancies between water use and payment — e.g., due to unusual changes in volume or non-payment of a bill — are to be reported to the supervisor. [Editor’s note: This paragraph has been updated based on Darrah’s comments.]

The comptroller found that accurate records of delinquent bills were lacking. Montroy said that with the help of the new software this past fall, the town had reported all delinquent bills to Essex County and had consequently been “made whole” by the county, which then re-levied the amounts due. “We just have to make sure the amounts are right,” Montroy said of his responsibility to the county, “plus we have to calculate the late fees, if there are any.”

The supervisor told his council that they would discuss in executive session after the workshop the extent to which the town would rectify past under- and over-billing. “Our attorney will look into this,” said Montroy. “We’ll have to decide how far we want to go back.”

The comptroller’s audit found that between 2010 and 2016, the town placed sales tax disbursements from the county in the town’s general fund. As a result, the 142 residents of St. Armand who are also residents of the village of Saranac Lake received this benefit twice. Municipalities are instructed to apply sales tax disbursements against their property tax warrant. The tax bills of village residents were offset by disbursements to both Saranac Lake and St. Armand, while residents in the rest of St. Armand benefited from only one disbursement.

Montroy told his board that he wanted their input to decide how the town would rectify past inequities. Going forward, he and the town’s accountant have created a “B fund” (often called a “part-town” fund) as a destination for the sales-tax disbursement for town residents who do not live in the village.

Members of the public present at Tuesday’s workshop included Dean Everritt, Geniene Willette-Burman and Connie Willette. Willette was an employee of the town in various capacities, including accountant, between 1973 and 2015. After the review of the corrective action plan was complete, she told the board, “I always wanted everything just so, and now I know it’s going to be just so. I can go home and rest now.”

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Other business

Former Councilperson Sam Grimone was sworn in to fill a vacant seat. Grimone will serve until Dec. 31.

The council members voted to allocate $27,849 to the Saranac Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad for 2018. This is reduced from $28,270 in 2017. They also voted to send $3,090 to the Tri-Lakes Humane Society for domestic animal control services in 2018.

Willette-Burman suggested to the officials that all board policies be added to the town website so residents can view them there instead of coming into the town office to read a hard copy. Darrah agreed that this is a good idea.