Alden Central School District – Fuel Management (2024M-90) | Office of the New York State Comptroller

Issued Date

October 25, 2024

Audit Objective

Determine whether Alden Central School District (District) officials properly managed fuel operations.

Key Findings

District officials did not properly manage fuel operations. Specifically, the Superintendent of Schools (Superintendent) and Business Administrator (BA) did not establish clear written guidance or provide adequate oversight of fuel management including: verifying the quantity of fuel purchased and unit price charged, controlling fuel access, safeguarding fuel inventory, monitoring fuel usage, maintaining perpetual inventory records, performing inventory reconciliations and properly billing non-District users. As a result:

The Transportation Supervisor did not update fuel prices in the system and the bills were calculated based on the outdated prices resulting in billing errors totaling $9,176.
Officials did not maintain physical (i.e., dip stick) tank readings or perform periodic inventory reconciliations and were not aware of fuel inventory shortages (424 gallons of diesel fuel and 750 gallons of unleaded fuel) valued at $3,500. Therefore, they could not identify, investigate and correct the possible causes.
Officials did not verify the accuracy of vendor charges therefore they did not identify fuel overcharges totaling $1,498.
Officials do not know how many employees and non-District fuel users from the Town of Alden (Town), the Village of Alden (Village), and the Crittenden Volunteer Fire Company (Fire Company) have keys to access the District’s fuel tanks, potentially allowing individuals to access to fuel and the ability to bypass the fuel pump system.

Recommendations

This audit report contains 25 recommendations to help District officials improve fuel operation management. District officials generally agreed with our findings and indicated they will initiate corrective action.

Audit Period

July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2023.

We reviewed charges to non-District users for the period June 1, 2022 through November 30, 2023. See Appendix B for further information.

Background

The District serves the Towns of Alden, Lancaster, Marilla and Newstead in Erie County, the Town of Darien in Genesee County and the Town of Bennington in Wyoming County.

The District is governed by an elected seven-member Board of Education (Board), which is responsible for the general management and control of the District’s financial and educational affairs. The Superintendent is the chief executive officer and is responsible, along with the BA, for the District’s day-to-day management under the Board’s direction.

The former Transportation Supervisor (Supervisor), who resigned in March 2024, oversaw the District’s transportation department and was responsible for managing the District’s fuel inventory. The Supervisor reported to the BA. The District purchases fuel using the Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) fuel contract and contracts with BOCES for claims auditor services.