Florida Firm Chosen to Audit Schools

The Florida-based firm Evergreen Solutions will be awarded a $90,000 contract to conduct an operational audit of the Hamilton-Wenham Regional School District, as the two towns' boards of selectmen picked the firm after a presentation at Wenham Town Hall on Tuesday, Aug. 31.

The selectmen chose Evergreen over another firm because they felt they would be getting Evergreen's top consultants, said Wenham Selectman Harriet Davis.

"We felt we were getting their A team, people with experience, and they did their homework," Davis said.

For example, Evergreen came prepared with a list of similar regional school districts, including some in Massachusetts, while the other firm had no adequate list for peer-to-peer comparison.

"We felt they would give us their B team, and that didn't sit well," Davis said of the other firm, MGT.

Davis said she hopes the audit helps to answer some questions and appease some of the school district's critics. 

The audit was approved by a Town Meeting vote last spring. It's goal is to examine the school district's operational, not financial or building, functions.

The $90,000 audit will be worth it, whatever it finds, Davis said.

"If we find some savings, that's wonderful," Davis said. "If we find that the schools are doing it right, that's chump change to end all the grousing."

Hamilton Selectman Dave Carey said the audit is about restoring trust between the school district and residents of the two towns who have become fed up with tax increases.

"This discontent between some of the residents and the School Committee is the biggest problem in the two towns," Carey said. "A lot of it has to do with trust. The idea of an audit is a good way to address it."

Carey said he hopes the audit can become a "happy ending to something very divisive."

Hamilton Town Manager Michael Lombardo, who has been on the job for about four months, said an audit is a good idea.

"Anytime you have a third-party review, I find them to be very constructive," said Lombardo, whose last job was as the city manager of Iowa City, Iowa.

Bob Gray, 69, of Hamilton, works three days a week in Boston for a distributor company, he said partly because he needs to keep working to afford to live in Hamilton.

Gray was a founding member last spring of a taxpayers group called Enough is Enough, which was upset last year about an override request from the school district for maintenance of school buildings. This led to Enough is Enough members demanding an accounting of how $500,000 to $700,000 budgeted annually for school maintenance was being spent, Gray said.

Finally, the group decided to seek an audit and launched a petition drive. They got more than 900 signatures from petitioning people at the post office and supermarket, got an article for Town Meetings in both Hamilton and Wenham, and it won overwhelmingly.

"We did very well," Gray said. "We were surprised we got 90 percent in Wenham, and 80 percent in Hamilton."

Gray said the EIE members attended the meeting when town leaders heard the final two presentations and liked the experience of the bigger company, MGT of America. However, the firm the selectmen chose, Evergreen, was founded by a former long-time consultant at MGT, Linda Recio.

"Of course we'll accept it, I'm sure they'll do a good job," Gray said. "We'll just see what happens. We're happy it's coming together after a long-time battle."