Bill Parrett

‘I Can’t Do This Anymore’: Town Council Chair Pushes Back After Committee Nomination

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The head of the Town Council last week called for the legislative body to get involved earlier in bringing new members onto a prominent committee that helps oversee financial reporting for the municipal government and school district. The Audit Committee serves as a kind of “financial arm” for the Town Council, the municipal body that created it, and as such the Council “should be in the process earlier,” according to Chair Steve Karl. That the Town Council isn’t part of the initial vetting of candidates “is considered to be sort of a blind spot in the ordinance” that established the Audit Committee, Karl told fellow Councilmen during the elected body’s March 29 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

He added, “The Council is getting candidates for this committee without any input prior to populating the committee, and that is a concern because of checks and balances that should be out there. And I’ll open it up for comment, but we have been passed a candidate which we can vote on—we can vote on at our next meeting—or we can send this to the [Town Council Bylaws and] Ordinance Committee for a look as far as: Do we want to have input in this process sooner going forward?”

The Town Council had a say in populating the Audit Committee when that group was created in 2014, yet “we weren’t consulted at all in this process” recently, Karl said, and the nomination of a new member has “gotten all the way through the process to us.”

“So the question is, given the fact that it’s a committee underneath the Council: Does it make sense for the Council to have a say in vetting candidates prior to going through the whole process and then coming back to us? As it stands right now, the Audit Committee was formed by the Council.

Audit Committee

Outside Accountant Investigating Whether Lunch Ladies Overcharged Parents, District Officials Confirm [UPDATED]

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District officials said Monday that they’re looking into whether parents’ charge accounts were depleted by the lunch ladies accused of stealing nearly $500,000 in cash over a period of several years from two public school cafeterias. Asked by members of the Audit Committee about the possible “double charging” of accounts by two sisters who had overseen the cafeterias at Saxe Middle School and New Canaan High School, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said the district is “taking a cursory look at that, to really determine whether or not a need for a deeper dive into it is present.”

“We have lots of documentation and it is a process of going through that documentation,” Luizzi told Committee members during their regular meeting at Town Hall. “We are working with Joe as well to do that for us and just take a look, just to know if any there is any direction we should take next.”

He referred to Joe Centofanti, a partner at PFK O’Connor Davies LLP, an accounting firm. Asked about the accounting work by NewCanaanite.com, Luizzi said in a statement: “The auditor is reviewing the system to look for any inconsistencies that indicate a need to perform a deeper audit of the system. This individual has performed such investigations before, and is familiar with the system that we use. We have significant documentation as well, and he will also be reviewing this documentation as part of his research.” Asked about the timetable for the work, he said: “This work is just beginning, and at this point we do not have any anticipated conclusion date. It is important that we are thoughtful and careful in this work, and will continue to take the time required to be as accurate as possible in our assessments.”

Government

Audit Committee Chairman: New Canaan Should Review Bonding Practices

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New Canaan’s bonded debt is the highest among all neighboring towns, the chairman of the Audit Committee said Wednesday night. What the town has bonded and plans to fund through bonding—typically large capital projects and equipment—would come, together, to nearly 100 percent of its revenues, Bill Parrett told members of the Town Council during their regular meeting. “It was a surprise to me,” Parrett said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. The question of just what New Canaan funds through bonding is “a significant issue,” according to Parrett, because though the IRS has rules and regulations around the practice, “that should not govern what we do as a town, as to what we in fact bond or don’t bond. “And when you bond something, as you all know, that is borrowing money±—sort of like a home equity loan, you have to pay it back … and we bonded quite a bit over last couple of years.

Government

‘A Failure of Town Leadership’: Audit Committee Critical of How NCHS Fields Projects Unfolded

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Though the donors and volunteers who gave time, money and energy to the partially completed fields projects at New Canaan High School deserve sincere thanks, the town also saw failures on multiple levels that led to undisclosed cost overruns, the chairman of the Audit Committee said Wednesday night. There were “adequate controls in place which should have helped avoid the issues and surprises that we had,” Bill Parrett told members of the Town Council during their regular meeting. “This is really important to understand, because if there were not adequate controls, we would have had material weaknesses from an accounting standpoint and having material weaknesses from an accounting standpoint would be very difficult to rectify in a short period. It looks to us that the issues are more about bad management—possibly waste—versus poor controls. There was a failure of town leadership, department leadership, boards, committees and councils, in our judgment.”

He spoke during an update for the Council on the Audit Committee’s review of how the projects at NCHS—rebuilding of a turf field, creation of two more and total overhaul of the track—came to cost New Canaan an estimated $800,000 more than originally thought.

Government

‘The Right Foot Going Forward’: Audit Committee, Interim CFO Praise Finance Department’s Work

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New Canaan for the first time since forming an Audit Committee to ensure proper financial controls are in place is no longer operating with “material weaknesses,” a member of the group said Wednesday morning. The town also has given full access to its elected treasurer and “we don’t have people signing checks that are unauthorized to sign them,” Audit Committee member Ed Kangas said during the group’s regular meeting, held at Town Hall. “It’s almost incredible to me that we had all those problems. These were big deals. This town should not have had those problems. I am pleased they are resolved and we are off on the right foot going forward.”

The comments came on the first meeting of the committee since New Canaan hired a new interim CFO, whose predecessor retired amid lingering “material weaknesses” in town financial processes and controls that had been identified by auditors. Tom Stadler, administrative officer in the office of the first selectman, said last week was busy at Town Hall with the former CFO’s “departure” and new interim hire Sandra Dennies’s start “and the walkthrough and changeover of the bank and investment accounts, and a number of other things,” adding that officials have put those matters “behind us now” to move on and “walk hand in hand.”

Referring to concerns that had been raised by the town treasurer, Audit Committee Chairman Bill Parrett said: “I understand there has been lots of activity in terms of giving the treasurer access to some of the accounts—maybe they were not the biggest or most important accounts—but they were accounts that he presumably should have been looking at, and that has been done.”

Dennies in brief remarks to the committee offered praise for her colleagues in Town Hall and in the finance department specifically.