by Alex Brooks
The State Comptroller’s audit of the Berlin Water District #2 was released this week. It is critical of the District’s financial practices. At the Berlin Town Board meeting on June 11, Supervisor Robert Jaeger commented on it. He said their biggest objection was all of the financial transactions are handled by one person, namely Town Clerk Anne Maxon. The auditors would like to see what they call “segregation of duties,” in which more than one person is involved at some stage of the billing, collection, deposit and reconciliation process. [private] Jaeger said in a small Town like Berlin, it is not feasible to have multiple people involved, so they will instead have more oversight of Water District finances by the Town Board. The details of how this will be implemented are to be written in a “Corrective Action Plan” which the Town is supposed to produce in the next month or so.
The auditors recommended that the Town Board do an Annual Audit of the Water District’s finances, and that they review and approve the quarterly billing registers sent out to water users, and billing adjustments made to individual accounts. They also recommended that the District come up with some way of verifying the number of fixtures at each address, since the billing is based on that.
The Water District serves 232 customers, and has a budget of about $83,000 per year. The audit can be found online at www.osc.state.ny.us/audits
Transfer Station
Supervisor Jaeger said the Board reviewed the revisions to the Transfer Station agreement with Petersburgh proposed by the Petersburgh Board, and said the Berlin Board is “not in favor of what had been returned to us.” Negotiations with Petersburgh will presumably continue.
Ivan Wager said he needs to hire another “call person” for the transfer station because Art Moon is “out on disability.” He said if anyone is interested, please get in touch with Ivan Wager.
Frustrated Clean-Up
Steve Riccardi said he was contacted about a house on Main Street that has piles of garbage on the property. Neighbors are concerned, and are willing to haul away the garbage themselves, but they need permission to go on the property to do that. Riccardi tried to contact the owner to work this out, but he got no response either to his first letter, or to a second registered letter that he sent. He said he finds it very frustrating to have someone ready willing and able to clean up the property and not be able to go ahead with it. He said he will continue to pursue it.
Eagle Scout
The meeting began with Eagle Scout Tim Shupe talking to the Board about what is involved in becoming an Eagle Scout. The Board passed a resolution congratulating Shupe on his accomplishment, and will present a certificate of commendation, suitably engrossed, when it is ready.
Supervisor’s Report
Berlin Supervisor Robert Jaeger said an administrator from the state agency which makes grants for Courtroom improvements came out this week to look at the work that had been done on the new courtroom in the Berlin Municipal Complex. He said the guy was “very impressed” with the work that had been done, and indicated that a story about this project will be the lead article in their publication soon.
• Jaeger also said the Berlin School District had requested to use the Municipal Complex for parking during their graduation ceremonies. He said he thought they will operate some sort of shuttle to bring people from the parking at the municipal complex to the ceremony at the school.
• Jaeger said the Town had received a check for $3,720 for the Mack truck that they sold at auction recently.
• Jaeger said he had received a phone call from someone at the state asking about the Town filing a plan on how they plan to meet the 2% tax cap. He apparently gave her a piece of his mind about the tax cap, and he said, “She was glad to hang up from that phone call.” Jaeger said it doesn’t work to mandate a limitation on Town spending, since there is no limitation on the Town’s costs. As a case in point, he mentioned that he had heard a preliminary estimate that health insurance premiums from CDPHP will go up 18.9% this year.
• Finally, he told the Board that he had received appraisals on the old Town Garage and the Watipi Building. The Garage was valued at $152,000, and the Watipi Building at $32,000.
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