Audit Objective 

Determine whether the Town of Stafford (Town) Town Board (Board) properly authorized and monitored capital project activity.

Key Findings 

The Board did not properly authorize and monitor capital project activity. Because the Board relied on an engineering firm (Engineer) and a financial advisor (Advisor) to manage the capital projects, the Board was not aware of project overruns, cash flow issues or financing source shortfalls. Moreover, the Board created a taxpayer equity issue when a portion of the costs to construct water districts was paid for by taxpayers not living in or receiving benefit from these water districts. Specifically, the Board and Town Supervisor (Supervisor) did not: 

• Maintain adequate capital project accounting records or prepare monthly itemized capital project budget-to-actual reports for the Board.
• Include eligible expenditures totaling $3,496 in the grant reimbursement applications. As a result, the Town received less funding than it was entitled to.

Key Recommendations 

• Adopt itemized capital project budgets.
• Maintain complete and accurate accounting records and provide periodic financial reports to the Board.

Town officials disagreed with certain aspects of our findings. Appendix B includes our comments on issues raised in the Town’s response.