Patch Q&A: Easton Town Accountant Wendy Nightingale

Please join us in celebrating the return of Patch Q&A: a feature in which we allow you to get to know the movers and shakers that help make Easton tick.

Today we'll feature Easton Town Accountant Wendy Nightingale.

Patch: How did you become a public accountant?

Nightingale: My first job out of college was working for a public accounting firm. One of the accounting teachers said to go the public accounting route. So, I did the public accounting route and I ended up working for a firm in Fall River. Their specialty was auditing cities and towns. After doing that for a few years, I got my certification, and government just seemed like a good fit for me.

I liked doing the financial statements. I thought it was interesting – the fund accounting was interesting and there’s a lot of variety in this kind of job.

Patch: You help handle millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Is that overwhelming?

Nightingale: It can be. I think if you have good control and you’re able to get things reconciled you’ll be O.K.

Patch: Have things in your office slowed down now that Town Meeting is over?

Nightingale: It’s definitely quieter now that town meeting is over. What was nice about this year is we finished Town Meeting on the night that it was scheduled. Some years where things get drawn out – like if we decide to have the town meeting a little later and we don’t know what’s going on with state aid yet, that could be a big distraction from getting the year end closed out and getting ready for the end of the fiscal year. But, this year is a good year.

Patch: What is a typical day like in your office?

Nightingale: So many different things could happen on a typical day. I have a staff of two people; I have an assistant town accountant. She kind of handles a lot of the payroll aspects, as far as getting the payroll processed, changing the employee rates, making any changes to deductions – things like that. Then there is someone else that handles veterans benefits and handles accounts payable.

So, they kind of handle that end of things, but then things always come up like once the bill are processed, I review the bills. I review the town bills, the school bills, or when department heads need to contract something I need to sign off on contracting. Sometimes I get calls from vendors for status of payments and when they can expect them.

I also handle parking tickets. I inherited that, so that’s just one of the things that’s part of my duties.

Patch: We often hear that Easton is in a good place fiscally compared to some other communities. What do you attribute that to?

Nightingale: I really attribute that to good management. We’ve really worked together and we also work with the budget subcommittee in establishing the budget. There’s a lot of good communication between the town and the school department. I think for the most part, we’re all on the same page.

We have to be conservative, but we also have to balance that with providing the services that people need. We have had to use one-time revenues to fund the budget, but we try not to go so far as to set us up for a really bad situation the following fiscal year.

One of the messages that David (Colton) said in his budget was ‘things are improving but we have to be careful.’ This year, we made a conscious effort not to take any money from stabilization for the budget. We reduced the amount of reserves we used to fund the budget.

Patch: What is your forecast for next year's budget?

Nightingale: I think next year will be along those lines. I don’t think you’ll see record amounts of new revenue or anything. I think you’ll see modest improvements.

Patch: Is there anything you'd like to convey to Easton residents?

Just that I really enjoy working here. And, I feel fortunate that I work with a lot of good people who really work hard. I think we really do have a good group of people here. A lot of people work behind the scenes and a lot of people don’t realize how much people do to try to provide services to people every day.