District officials need to improve the separation payment procedures. Officials paid five former administrators a total of $24,989 for accrued unused vacation leave upon separation from the District based on past practice, even though their individual employment agreements did not provide for such payments. Officials did not realize the former Superintendent was to reimburse the District $2,813 for previously received tuition assistance upon his separation from the District. The District received the $2,813 payment from the former Superintendent in February 2020. Had District officials reviewed the employment agreement terms and payment calculations for accrued unused vacation leave prior to employee separations, they may have avoided making payments that were not specified in the agreements, detected and prevented the erroneous underpayment of $773 to the former Superintendent and identified the reimbursement he owed for tuition assistance upon his separation.

The Board did not provide sufficient oversight of the Fonda-Fultonville Joint Wastewater Facility (Facility). The Villages of Fonda and Fultonville entered into an amended intermunicipal agreement on May 1, 1997 to operate the Facility. The Board did not: Act in accordance with the intermunicipal agreement. Ensure that the former Chairman and former Fiscal Officer maintained adequate accounting records or provide adequate oversight over financial operations. Routinely meet to audit and approve claims for payment as required by the agreement. Approve and monitor vendor contracts. In addition, due to inadequate records, the former Fiscal Officer was unable to provide the Board with any financial reports or accounting of money collected and disbursed during our audit period.

District officials did not transparently fund or use reserve funds. The Board and District officials did not include all funding of reserves in the annual budget or publish the required legal notices when using reserves, District voters were not properly informed and did not have the opportunity to voice their opinion on the District's funding and use of reserves. The District's annual budget included $100,000 each year labeled as “transfer to other funds” which officials told us was intended to fund the capital reserves. During this same period, capital reserves were funded with over $1 million, or $500,000 (50 percent) more than budgeted. In particular, since 2016, the District has funded reserves with an average of $210,000 annually.

Cash receipts were not remitted timely, accurately and intact and records were inadequate. Cash receipts were not remitted timely and intact, resulting in discrepancies with 47 of 76 remittances (62 percent) to the Town Clerk. Center cash collection records were inadequate and incomplete. We found that Town officials were unable to locate 41 special permits issued and three press-numbered receipts were missing from the receipt books.

The College is overpaying for health insurance and health insurance buyout payments are inaccurate. The Rockland County Community College (College) is a component unit of Rockland County (County). The County administers the College's health (medical, dental and vision) insurance programs and remits an invoice to the College for these costs. For the fiscal years ended August 31, 2018 and August 31, 2019, the College was overbilled for health insurance by a total of $4.6 million. We found that 16 of the 20 health insurance buyouts paid were inaccurate. College officials received the buyout amount from the County with no supporting calculations and made the payments based on those amounts. Using the premium rates provided, we determined that the College underpaid a total of $7,667 to 15 participants and overpaid $270 to one participant.

The Board did not develop a comprehensive cash collections policy to provide guidance for payments received at the Recreation Department (Department). The Department did not receipt and remit money in a timely manner. For remittances made in May 2018 and May 2019, the Department generated receipts up to 21 days after registration and remitted money up to 24 days after collection. All employees working at the Department can accept payments. However, employees are not provided with separate cash drawers. Therefore, all money collected is commingled in the same envelope until deposited.

We found that the Board did not approve 18 contracts with cumulative payments totaling $1.3 million, as required by the School’s policy. In addition, School officials made 26 purchases totaling $289,500 without using quotes, as recommended by the School’s policy. The School’s procurement policy is not comprehensive. o While the policy indicates that the Board will approve all contracts for purchases over $20,000, it does not specify how those written quotes will be obtained (e.g., advertising) or that the Board will review the quotes obtained for those contracts to form its approval. o The Board generally relies on the Director to seek quotes, select the vendor and provide the subsequent contract to the Board for its review and approval. o While the policy recommends that officials obtain three quotes for purchases between $5,000 and $20,000, it does not indicate whether these should be written or verbal. o The policy does not specifically describe the Board’s role and process for handling contracts awarded because of emergency situations.

The Town Clerk (Clerk) did not record, deposit, disburse and report all moneys collected in a timely and accurate manner, and the Board did not provide adequate oversight of her activities. We identified an accumulated cash shortage of $4,971 as of February 28, 2015. The Clerk also did not complete monthly bank reconciliations for her two accounts, or accountabilities to compare cash on hand with outstanding liabilities. The Clerk's mishandling of funds caused her bank account to have a negative balance that prevented the proper remittance of money to the Supervisor and State agencies. Additionally, the Clerk's monthly reports understated actual collections by at least $1,746 over the 14-month audit period. Upon finding a variance between the Clerk's cash on hand and her outstanding liabilities, we referred our audit findings to the OSC Division of Investigations, whose investigation subsequently uncovered $27,000 in missing penalty fees from tax collection money. On June 5, 2018 the Clerk was arrested and charged with misappropriating more than $35,000. On September 24, 2019 she pleaded guilty to fourth degree grand larceny. The clerk was sentenced on October 23, 2019 to pay full restitution in the amount of $36,122 and 250 hours of community service, and she is not to seek public office.

The District's budgeting practices made it appear that the District needed to both increase real property taxes and use appropriated and reserve funds to close projected budget gaps. However, the District realized operating surpluses and, consequently, fund balance was not needed to finance operations during the past three years and is expected not to be needed in 2019-20. The Board appropriated approximately $929,100 in fund balance from 2016-17 through 2018-19 and did not use any of that amount to fund operations because of generated operating surpluses. As of June 30, 2019, surplus fund balance totaled approximately $972,000, exceeding the statutory limit by approximately $535,000 or 5 percentage points. When unused appropriated fund balance was added back to the surplus fund balance, it totaled over $1.1 million, exceeding the statutory limit by approximately $680,500 or 6 percentage points.

Town officials complied with competitive bidding requirements for 15 of 18 tested purchase and public works contracts totaling $10.6 million. Town officials obtained professional services from 11 service providers who were paid a total of approximately $1.7 million. Town officials sought competition when selecting a provider of engineering and architectural services for construction of the Town highway garage (paid a total of $622,182 during the audit period). However, they did not competitively bid contracts for paving services and brush collection totaling $471,700. In addition, officials did not seek competition for 10 professional services totaling $1.1 million. Finally, officials did not obtain quotes as required by the procurement policy for eight purchases totaling about $115,000.

District officials need to improve internal controls over Future Farmers of America (FFA) cash receipts and disbursements. We found District officials did not perform an annual audit of FFA records during our audit period. We also found that collections did not include adequate supporting documentation for 41 deposits totaling $264,624. Furthermore, there was no supporting documentation for 15 out of 78 check disbursements tested totaling $5,871. Finally, FFA advisors used debit cards to make purchases totaling $74,893 without the required prior approvals.

Overall the Board could have improved its financial management. It did not appropriately budget for certain expenditures and did not properly monitor spending during the year. We found that the highway fund had deficit fund balances during our audit period and incurred operating deficits in two of the past three years (2016 and 2017). The Supervisor and Superintendent told us that road repair expenditures exceeded appropriations in 2017 due to unanticipated road damage caused in part by excessive rainfall and flooding. However, they were unable to provide an explanation for the budget shortfall that occurred in 2016. General fund revenues were overestimated by approximately $72,000 over the three-year period (2016 through 2018) or on average $24,000 (7 percent) each year while appropriations were overestimated by approximately $216,000 or on average $72,000 (21 percent) each year. Finally, the Board did not develop and adopt comprehensive written multiyear financial and capital plans to help guide the budget development process or establish reserve funds to help finance future capital needs.

We identified 42 professional service providers who were paid a total of $24.6 million during the audit period. We selected and reviewed the contracts of 10 professional service providers who were paid approximately $2 million. We found that District officials did not seek competition from three professional service providers who were paid approximately $696,000. The three services provided were legal ($520,863), insurance ($111,294) and engineering ($64,134). Furthermore, we found the officials did not periodically review the services of the three professionals to determine if a request for proposal (RFP) is needed. When District officials do not seek competition, they cannot assure taxpayers that procurements are made in the most prudent and economical manner, without favoritism, extravagance, fraud or corruption.

City officials did not segregate the duties of the clerks inputting payroll or implement compensating controls. For example, each of the clerks have the ability to change, add and delete payroll information. The Treasurer does not independently perform a review or certify payment of wages and salaries for the City's employees. Further, after the payrolls are processed, no one reviews the payroll journal, which contains information including gross pay, net pay and withholding amounts for each employee. In addition, the Council did not adopt policies that address how compensatory (comp) time will be authorized, earned and used. Finally, City officials did not have a process to verify accrual balances prior to approving the use of leave accruals.

As of June 30, 2019, the unemployment insurance reserve and tax certiorari reserve balances of $381,484 and $563,862, respectively, were excessive. In addition, the District's reported fund balances exceeded its statutory limit in all three fiscal years. Although the District's budgets were reasonably accurate and property tax levies remained relatively flat during these years, the positive budget variances were enough to offset the appropriated fund balance, which was approximately 4 percent of the budget each year. After adding back unused appropriated fund balances, the District's recalculated surplus fund balance exceeded the statutory limit each of the last three fiscal years, ranging from 4.7 percentage points to 8.9 percentage points over the limit. Finally, the Board and District officials did not develop multiyear financial plans or establish targeted funding levels for reserves.

We found that signed checks were printed before the claims auditor audited and approved claims. As a result, claims for 213 check disbursements totaling $845,215 were not audited and approved prior to payment. Except for minor instances, we found the claims paid prior to audit were supported by adequate documentation, for appropriate purposes and subsequently audited by the claims auditor. In addition, credit card claims, paid by wire transfers, were not audited and approved prior to payment and 38 of 105 credit card charges totaling $16,664 were not adequately supported. Additionally, the credit card claims continued to be paid prior to audit and approval through our audit period. Although the claims were reviewed subsequent to payment, they continued to lack supporting documentation. The claims auditor stated that he was not aware the District had a credit card. Therefore, he did not know that there were credit card claims to be audited.

The Board has not adopted a comprehensive written fund balance and reserve policy establishing optimal funding levels and plans for reserves. We analyzed the balances of the District's reserve funds as of June 30, 2019. We determined that the District's tax certiorari reserve had a balance of nearly $1.9 million as of June 30, 2019 and was overfunded because there were no outstanding tax certiorari claims supporting the balance. In addition, we compared the 2016-17 through 2018-19 estimated revenues and budgeted appropriations with actual operating results and found that estimated revenues were generally reasonable, but budgeted appropriations were overestimated by an average of 3.8 percent. Due to the unplanned operating surpluses in two of the last three years, appropriated unrestricted fund balance totaling $3.5 million was not used during the 2016-17 through 2018-19 fiscal years – only $217,580 (of the almost $1.5 million in fund balance appropriated for 2016-17) was used. Finally, over the last three completed years, the District reported surplus fund balances of 3.9 to 4 percent of the next year's appropriations, which was within the statutory limit. However, with the unused appropriated fund balance and the overfunded tax certiorari reserve added back, surplus fund balance exceeded the statutory limit by 9.5 percentage points, or about $3.3 million, as of June 30, 2019.

District officials did not review or reconcile electronic payments with cash receipts records to verify that all amounts were collected and remitted to the District. As a result, the District did not initially receive more than $5,500 in fees recorded as collected but not remitted by a vendor in January 2019. In November 2019, the vendor agreed to fully reimburse the District for lost revenue. In addition, the Board did not adopt written enforcement policies for overdue accounts and the Coordinator did not ensure overdue accounts were invoiced in a timely manner. We reviewed an accounts receivable aging report for the before and after school program and identified 75 accounts with outstanding balances totaling almost $28,000 as of August 13, 2019.

District officials did not always comply with the procurement policy by using requests for proposals (RFPs) when procuring professional services. During the audit period, officials paid approximately $3.14 million to 29 professional service providers. District officials did not periodically seek competition for services from five professional service providers who were paid a total of $911,795 during our audit period. The District has not sought competition for legal services in 28 years (since 1992), bond counsel for 24 years (since 1996), architectural services in 20 years (since 2000) or construction management services for 16 years (since 2004). In addition, officials could not tell us how long ago their current financial advisor was first appointed. Because officials did not always use competition to procure professional services, they cannot be sure that professional services are procured in the most prudent and economical manner.

The Board did not provide adequate oversight of the management Company's work or actively direct and monitor financial operations. The Company provided the School's curriculum and performed all aspects of financial transactions for the School with little oversight. The Company failed to sufficiently act as the School's audit liaison and no audit committee acted independently from the Company during our audit period. School officials did not ensure the Company provided all of the services required by its contract. Officials also did not receive documentation that supported the service fees and reimbursements paid to the Company. Finally, the School could have earned up to $28,000 if the Directors had used School provided cash rewards credit cards.