Plympton’s free cash was certified by the state the day before the Sept. 29 Board of Selectmen meeting, but Town Accountant Lisa Hart told the board the number is lower than it used to be and that several items will pull on it further. Two old accounts are in deficits that will have to be written off. A new $9,200 bill for the town’s financial software was never budgeted. Fees that once flowed to free cash are now going into a police revolving account instead.
Hart opened the 28-minute afternoon meeting with an update on the year-end close and the town’s switch to new accounting software. She handed the board the state’s free cash certification, which Chairman Nathaniel Sides said had arrived “hot off the presses yesterday.”
Hart said the town is getting free cash certified faster than it used to. “It would be nice if the amount was high like it used to be,” she said, adding that the town tends to spend more, which leaves less behind. Records from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue list the certified free cash at $215,376.
Sides asked about roughly $250,000 in real estate taxes still listed as receivable. The accountant said that figure is “fairly average” for the town.
Hart pointed the board to two balances she said the town will not recover. The first is a water infrastructure grant account that was overspent and has carried a deficit for a couple of years. “That’s going to need to be written off somewhere,” she said. “So, we will need to find a place to get funds for that.”
The second is the town’s old police detail account. She said its unpaid invoices are now more than two years old and are unlikely to be collected. A few years ago, she said, the town opened a new detail account to start fresh. That account also tends to run a deficit, but revenue that comes in through September can be applied against it, so it usually clears within about three months. She said the detail accounts should be tracked more carefully. As long as the old deficits stay on the books, she said, they affect the town’s cash.
Two school grant accounts, Title IV and IDEA, show about $11,000 in deficit, but she said those are not true deficits. They are reimbursement grants: the schools spend the money first and then draw down the funds. Hart said communication with the schools about those drawdowns “has been very poor.” She has met with school officials and asked them to send copies of their grants and to draw down funds by the end of July so the balances do not affect free cash.
A police grant through SEMLEC, the regional law enforcement council, has also been in deficit for some time. She said she has asked the police department to find out whether more grant money is coming or whether the gap must be covered from another source.
Sides asked whether a surplus anywhere in the police accounts could offset the deficits. Hart said the department’s revolving account for vehicle fees does hold extra money. She said administrative fees are now also being deposited there, and she does not know whether town meeting ever voted to allow that. The revolving fund was set up for vehicle fees, she said, and she has not seen anything spent from it.
Hart told the board those administrative fees used to go into the town’s general revenue and end up in free cash. With the change, she said, the town will get less free cash.
Sides, drawing on his time on the Finance Committee, said he believes the administrative fees pay for about three extra hours a week for a police department staff member, rather than adding those hours to the salary line. He said it would be “cleaner” to put the cost in the salary line and return the fees to general revenue, and that the board should take that up with the Finance Committee. Hart agreed. “I would feel better with it that way,” she said.
The town moved this year to the VADAR financial software system after its longtime vendor, CDS, stopped offering municipal financial services. The accountant said the first VADAR invoice, for $9,200, should arrive soon. “We need to figure out where that money is coming from,” she said. “That was not budgeted.”
Sides recalled that the cost came up during budget season and suggested it may have been planned for the technology line. Administrative Assistant Briggette Martins asked who would process the payment. Sides said the accountant’s office should handle the warrant, but that the funding source should be confirmed with Town Administrator Bob Fennessy.
Hart said she is fully comfortable processing and posting warrants in the new system but has not yet started the monthly budget reports she used to send each department. Under the old system, she said, she could email all of them at once. Now she will have to print and deliver each one. She plans to start with the largest departments and any department spending ahead of pace, and hopes to have those reports out by Oct. 15 and no later than the end of October.
She is also working on three year-end reports due to the Department of Revenue: the balance sheet, the Schedule A, and the tax rate. She said the town hopes to set the tax rate by mid-November to avoid the December rush at the state.
Asked by Sides whether VADAR will eventually make the job easier, Hart was candid. “Right now it does not feel like it’s saving me any time,” she said. She expects it will take about a year to be fully up to speed. She added that the Treasurer-Collector’s contract with the new payroll vendor, Harpers, covers preparing the town’s 1099 tax forms, which VADAR does not do, and that the two offices are gathering quotes for that work.
“Everyone’s aware of the fiscal difficulties we’re going to face this year,” Sides said. “So any information you can provide us to help us make some decisions would certainly be helpful.”
The board also approved the warrant for the Nov. 3 state election. Voting will take place in the Deborah Sampson Meeting Room at the Town House, 5 Palmer Rd., from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Along with nine statewide ballot questions, the ballot includes U.S. senator; governor and lieutenant governor; attorney general; secretary of state; treasurer; auditor; U.S. representative for the 9th Congressional District; governor’s councilor for the First District; state senator for the Plymouth and Barnstable District; state representative for the 12th Plymouth District; Plymouth District attorney; Plymouth County register of probate; Plymouth County commissioner; and Plymouth County treasurer.
The item was listed as a ratification, but a town official told the board it was an original vote. The board had approved early voting hours months earlier, she said, but had not yet voted on the election warrant itself.