$1.1 Million Accounting Error ...

$1.1 Million Mistake ...

The story

Bridge reimbursement mis-applied

Nashua Telegraph Story on $1.1 million accounting error...

The mistake isn't new. It happened way back in 2006. It just now got caught.

It doesn't look like it's deliberate. It's just not that kind of mistake.

So what happened?

When bridge funding was apportioned for the Bedford Road bridge rehab began, the state promised 1.1 million. Instead of putting that in the ledger directly against the bridge project, it was accounted for as revenue. Tax income.

So we've been going along thinking we had that money as general fund money. And we've been going along thinking that the bridge was being funded by the state. In the minds of the town money experts, they've been counting that money twice.

It's a big oops.

So what do we do?

There are calls for criminal investigations. I think that's not only knee-jerk but shows a basic antagonism to our staff that we hire to run the town.

A full accounting investigation must occur, but this isn't money that disappeared or was siphoned off. It was allocated improperly.

Should there be reprimands? Probably, it's a bad mess-up. That's what we have a Town Manager for, to deal with this kind of mistake appropriately.

A call for a quick overview

Town Manager Hickey is already describing new approaches to avoid this in the future. I think the bigger and more worrisome question is, why did our accounting practices not find this sooner?

I would call on Town Manager Hickey to report back to the Town Council within 2 weeks. I would ask him to give an initial overview of how it took this long for the error to come to light.

Two weeks is not enough for a thorough examination. That needs to be ongoing. But the town's citizens need to quickly have an outline of the probable areas of failure, and an assurance that the problems end here.


WE MUST HAVE a rapid initial report...
and we must have:

• A more detailed overview of the problem.


• An initial analysis of the where the accounting system failed to catch this.


• An initial determination if any other similar errors might be on the books.


• An initial determination of the steps needed to address the financial issues this has caused.

It's not going to be fun to go through this, but we can do it without recriminations. A level-headed approach and appropriate, measured responses will put us past this and on to building Vision for Merrimack.