The opinions stated below are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of other members of the Board.
When I ran for office, I wanted to bring my experience and expertise to the Board of Selectmen to work together as a deliberative body for the betterment of Stoneham. I expect and welcome debate among my colleagues, as was common during my tenure on the School Committee, but I never anticipated that it would be necessary to correct time and again the continuous accusations and misinformation directed towards a town department.
I could go line by line and parcel out the inconsistencies in the most recent letter to the editor, as there are many, but what residents need to know is that there wasn't a misallocation of water and sewer funds and your rates were never “artificially inflated.” There is no room for interpretation here. At one of the first meetings I attended as a new member I sat in complete shock as two members supported an "Investigation of the DPW" despite having just been told by the independent auditor that there were no findings. Any department undergoing an audit should be given a list of improvements that can be made but to suggest an investigation by the Attorney General is needed implies wrongdoing. (5/9/17 Renee Davis, CPA, reporting on the audit to the BOS )
We have a relatively small Department of Public Works (DPW) and it is common for employees to handle a variety of tasks. If there is a snow storm, DPW employees are responsible for plowing the roads. If there is a water main break, employees are deployed to handle that emergency. Our DPW employees are shifted based on the town’s most pressing needs and their hours are budgeted based on an estimate of what that need will be year to year. Some of my colleagues may favor another way of assigning hours, but to continually suggest wrongdoing is irresponsible and creates an unwarranted level of mistrust.
Time and time again, we have heard that our town’s method of billing to the Water and Sewer enterprise account is consistent with comparable towns. Last spring the town hired an independent third party consultant, Powers and Sullivan, to conduct an audit. The auditors were given specific instructions to scrutinize the billing practice of the Department of Public Works and found no material deficiencies and offered only suggestions for strengthening the department. In fact they issued an “unmodified audit opinion…the best opinion you can get.” At the time these finding were presented, there was not a single objection to these conclusions raised until after the auditor had left the meeting. Despite being assured that there were no significant issues we continue to hear members use terms which have negative and derogatory connotations about our DPW. (4/13/17 Jim Sullivan and Renee Davis, CPAs with Powers and Sullivan reporting to the FAB Audit Committee)
Residents should also understand that the DPW salaries are paid regardless of whether it is from the Water and Sewer Enterprise fund or the general fund. A shift in allocations does not change how much you pay. The nominal reduction in rates that are regularly boasted about, were not tied to exposing an illicit billing practice and in terms of the long term health of our town’s reserves, it was not “the right thing to do.” In fact, a plan was approved to run a deficit of approximately $1.6 million last year between water and sewer. I'd be hard pressed to find a resident that wouldn't love to have their bill reduced, however, even the former Finance and Advisory Board Chair acknowledged, “the reduction in the water and sewer rates…brought the enterprise fund balances below the recommended level that the Finance Board typically would like to see.” (4/27/17 FAB discussion about low reserves)
In the letter, it is suggested that this was a transparency issue and about “insiders who want to protect the status quo.” I would counter that it is instead a flawed campaign promise to “publicly expose” what has been erroneously deemed as “highly inappropriate misallocations” long after proven otherwise. It is unconscionable that this narrative continues to be peddled long after it has been proven false by the past and present Town Administrator, the DPW Director, the former and current Town Accountant and the auditors at Powers and Sullivan.
There seems to be a persistent unwillingness among some members of the board to accept expert opinions that lie in opposition to their own. The Board of Selectmen should be held to a higher standard and we should be collectively working with our all of our town departments, not against them, to continually improve services to the residents of Stoneham.
Selectwoman Shelly MacNeill
