By R. PATRICK CORBETT Observer-Dispatch

VIENNA — Financial records for the McConnellsville water district were in such disarray earlier this year that some of its 90 customers may have been getting free water, State Comptroller H. Carl McCall said.

Town Supervisor Mark Murray said he and other board members suspected there were some shortcomings in the town’s accounting practices, and in January 2000, “we requested that the comptroller come in and do the audit. If we were doing something wrong we wanted to correct it.”

Murray said he was disappointed that the comptroller’s office did not send a team earlier, but he is satisfied that they have identified the problems.

“Not that we’re happy with the findings,” he said, “but now we can make corrections.”

The state auditors cited the town for its failure to put unpaid water charges on the following year’s town taxes, the lack of penalties on water payments more than 30 days overdue and the absence of historical water billing records.

The auditors said “the lack of adequate accounting records” for the McConnellsville district forced them to contact customers directly to confirm payments that had been recorded by the water district billing clerk.

Among the findings: Auditors said they found no evidence that $5,736 that was credited to 16 accounts actually had been paid by customers.

They said that four of those 16 customers said they never had made payments, three of the four said they had not been billed in 2000 and two of them said they had not been billed since 1998.Auditors said that billing addresses were incorrect for seven of 35 customers sampled. The homes at those addresses had been sold to new owners as long ago as 1997.

The auditors said they “discussed the water customers’ responses with the billing clerk and she presented us with no evidence refuting the statements made by the customers.”

Billing Clerk Tanya Pifer said, “The state was very helpful.” She said the findings are being addressed and she referred specific questions to Murray.

Inspectors also questioned a number of records in the North Bay district: n They found that although water rates have not changed in three years, water district revenues dropped more than 50 percent, from $44,255 in 1998 to $21,260 in 2000.

n “Water usage was not always billed timely,” auditors said in the final report. Some bills sent out in February were based on water meter readings dating back to 1999.

n They said that of four meter readings they sampled, one had not been read since January 1999 and there were no records that a second meter ever had been read. “The billing clerk (Pifer) stated that she was uncertain as to whether these customers had been billed,” they said. Murray said he was not surprised by the findings.

“I had spoken to people about meter reading before the audit,” he said. “Now we will put more teeth into it.”

He attributed most of the problems to “all the changeovers in administration” in the past two years and the difficulty a small town has in hiring qualified personnel and upgrading expensive computerized billing systems.

McCall said in the report of examination released July 9 that “the problems identified by our examination demand the immediate attention of the town board.”

The audit report urged the board to be “more involved in the water districts’ day-to-day operations by overseeing and reviewing the work of town personnel involved in each stage of the user charge process,” and to find out why water revenues in the North Bay district have plummeted.

Auditors also criticized the way in which the town bills customers in the East Oneida Lake Sewer District Extension, but Murray said the procedure would be corrected “immediately.”

He said that the Town Board met with the auditors two months ago to discuss the findings and that it has “started the ball rolling” to correct the problems.

The supervisor said state auditors reviewed other financial records and added, “The good news is the rest of our books and budget are fine.”

The state team cited the town for failing to file a required financial report for 2000 and noted that recorded cash had not been reconciled with bank balances by the end of May.

Murray said that those shortcomings were caused by changes in the computer accounting software and that they have been or will be corrected.

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-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001