Sounds familiar:
And it does not appear to be caused by changing from a town accountant (town employee) to an accounting service. Looks like there are a few towns that struggle with "good numbers"

ASHBURNHAM — The fiscal problems of the small town are being untangled slowly, and the cause is being found and attempts being made to make it right again.

There was more to the fiscal story that floated to the surface at a recent meeting about troubles the town had filing with the state to have their finances approved and free cash certified. The town has not yet filed its fiscal 2018 audit. This problem centers around a change in accounting software from Munis to VADAR.

During a recent meeting of the Board of Selectmen, member Leo Janssens asked, “Where we were once on Munis, would it be costly to go back to it?”

Chairwoman Rosemarie Meissner told him that she had asked and it would be expensive to return to Munis, software that provides data management for municipalities and school districts.

The town moved on from Munis to VADAR, which Selectman John Mulhall described as trading a Cadillac with all its bells and whistles for a Kia.

Meissner said she was quoted $800,000 to return to the Munis software the town had once used.

She explained that when the town was running Munis, it received a reduced rate for upgrades, but now the town would have to buy the brand new package, making it extremely costly.

Interim Town Administrator Douglas Briggs described the problems of switching from the Munis software program to the new VADAR program.

“When the changeover happened, some of the numbers to Munis went over to VADAR, and they changed, so the numbers weren’t the correct numbers,” he said. “What we would have to do is have somebody go back in under Munis and see what the number is. ... How do you do that when the number is gone?”

Briggs said he will contact Munis to find a solution to retrieving the numbers and how much it will cost.

Meissner wondered if they could return to Munis and what would it cost for a short period of time to maintain the VADAR system so records can be transposed correctly. Meissner said it should take about three months to assure the numbers have transferred correctly.

Meissner explained that the town shut off Munis on June 30, and there is no way to access it.

“We didn’t have a backup, nothing. We went into VADAR and we didn’t have the full package. We did not buy the upgraded model,” she said. “We got the bare-bones model.”

“So we went from the full-loaded Cadillac to the stripped-down Kia,” said Janssens.

Meissner told Briggs that he should “make that call” to find out what can be done to rectify the situation where numbers in the budget disappeared. She said it also may impact other things down the line.

Briggs took over as acting town administrator after Memorial Day and immediately discovered that the town needed to complete the 2018 audit. Though they have tried to reconcile numbers between the treasurer and accountant before July, they soon realized they would not be in time to get free cash certified. Briggs said the town is getting close on finishing up the fiscal 2018 budget. He said the auditor was also willing to do fiscal 2019. They are still trying to determine the price, but Briggs said he’s sure 2019 will go much easier than 2018.

from the NRSD website:

“The Narragansett Regional School District in partnership with the communities and parents, Think about that for a moment.

"In partnership with communities and parents"

I think their partners just told them to do something, accept $19.5 million dollars as a budget base. Apparently that partnership is a one way street. Not only did the school committee just ignore their partners, they belittled them, chastised them and talked them as if they were little kids who do not know what is best or right. I mean, those partners only pay their bills.

As has been pointed out here before, using the dollars provided from DESE or Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and some dollar figures provided by the district, along with what two towns have said they will provide, added up, those dollars equal $19.8 million dollars.

Message to the school district - Take the $19.5 million before you really piss off your partners. Watch the you tube meeting of the last school committee meeting and you can view how they acted. Personally, I look forward to speaking to the district at the next district wide meeting, as opposed to being quiet at the last one. I hope they bring their car seats.

School committee wants to sit at a table and belittle Templeton residents; who paid for that brand new school, who provides the school resource officer, who is providing the fields that apparently the district is using for sports activities, where does the district office sit. The answer to all of those points is Templeton! So school committee, you may want to stop belittling Templeton by telling us we do not support the schools, we do not pay our fair share or someone pays more than we do.

I see in your spread sheet budget from first meeting in February, a dollar figure of $56,113.00 for practice bus to Gilman, as in Gilman Waite fields (you know, that long project to develop a recreation area for Templeton.

Lastly, I hope the district makes plans for many snow days because if Templeton has to make cuts, the roads may not be plowed in time for it to be safe to have school buses on the roads. Lastly, how about them wood chips, are they still at $28.00 per ton? Were they ever at $28.00 per ton?

The pile of dollars is only so big and there are more things to cover than there are dollars; hence, everyone has to feel the heat, even teachers and kids, it is called reality. Speaking of reality, if you live on Wellington or lower South Road, welcome to reality come the first day of school.

Something going on??

from the Town Administrator weekly report of August 29, 2019::

Town Clerk: – I spent a lot of time this week responding to a summons for documents from the State Ethics office. I attended the department head meeting. Continue to be busy with marriage certificates and vital records request. Posted the Attorney General’s decision on the general bylaw changes from the Annual Town Meeting.

In case you need some reading material, here is the Bump report, a study and conclusion by Massachusetts state auditor Suzanne Bump.

https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/10/18/RegionalSchoolDistrictsMunicipalImpactStudy_1.pdf


A few of the things found in the report:

To address some of the challenges highlighted by the study, Bump has called on the Commonwealth to modernize its funding structure for regional schools by:

• Developing deeper incentives to encourage communities to regionalize, noting that the current incentives do not provide enough enticement for schools to give up some measure of local control;
• Fully funding its commitment to reimburse 100 percent of regional transportation expenses, offer stipends to encourage efficiencies to reduce transportation costs, and allow the use of regional transportation authorities to provide RSD transportation;
• Offering planning grants to explore the combination of existing RSDs into larger groupings; and
• Ensuring greater transparency from the Massachusetts School Building Authority on its decision-making process for districts that close school facilities.

Additionally, in the study, Bump calls on the Legislature to streamline the budget adoption process for RSDs and to examine and revise inconsistent funding formulas for children whose families choose educational options outside of their home community. Bump also called for RSDs to conduct periodic reviews of their regional agreements.

The Templeton Common Master Plan link.

https://www.templetonma.gov/sites/templetonma/files/file/file/final_report_1_22_10.pdf 


enjoy the read and trip down memory lane.

A letter to the editor; could this be Templeton in the future?

something to think about if you think bringing in all this business will solve everything.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Athol is booming — shopping centers galore — Orange is the made for TV movie capital of the state. Lots of hard cash is flowing into our towns. Marijuana growers and sellers have taken over Main Street with mega proposals for business ventures and job offers.

Our local economy is in the clouds or one would think it should be. Yet upon a closer look we see a very different picture. We see drugs claiming too many of our local young lives. Neighbors who have worked hard all their lives having to sell their beloved homes because of this town’s insatiable appetite for higher and higher taxes that most folks, especially our elderly on fixed incomes, can’t afford to pay. It’s disgraceful to say the least. It makes me wonder, with so much development in the area shouldn’t the residential taxes go down as “Big Business” pays its share of town expenses?

Jim McGovern and Anne Gobi are you asleep at the wheel? Our own Suzie Whipps needs to take a real close look at why all this “progress” and “boom” isn’t trickling down to the “little guy” in the form of property tax relief.

The lifelong residents, especially the elderly, need lower taxes, more services and answers and transparency about how these huge projects and corporations, hotels, et all are going to benefit us townspeople.

We still have no clue as to why we lost our over-qualified FBI-man police chief. A really fine man by all accounts.

Why are our schools so interested in political correctness? They are forgetting school is for reading, writing and arithmetic.

Parents aren’t allowed to question our superintendent? Give me a break. What’s going on here?

We built a multi-million dollar new school building, but it’s like putting lipstick on a pig if the curriculum is still garbage and can’t seem to compete with what’s taught at Bement School or Deerfield Academy, the top private schools. It’s all an effort in futility.

Wake up citizens of Athol and Orange and find out exactly when we can expect some tangible benefit from all this commerce.

We need a local task force made up of locals to protect homeowners so our area won’t remain the foreclosure capital of the state!

I’m sure I’m not the only one saddened by what I see all over our towns.

We need to do something now!

Molly Bennett Aitken

Athol

All regional school districts can now be listed in the same category as municipal / state governments - financially questionable. Why would I post that you ask / ponder.

And if you share or copy, please include the details;
June 4, 2019, Narragansett FY2020 "budget" spread sheet shows Templeton minimum contribution at $4,618,384.00, while the department of education (DESE) shows it to be $4,621,299.00 for FY2020. The DESE information comes from the web page of MA department of education (DESE) and this same web page shows chapter 70 state aid at $9,951,444.00 while the above referenced spread sheet from NRSD shows FY2020 chapter 70 money at $9,938,544.00. Please keep in mind, the dollar figures from NRSD were put together BEFORE the final state budget was signed with no veto's, by the governor.

Also note, state aid is based off of information provided by the district on October 1 of the previous year. In this case, October 1, 2018, which in calendar time is less than one year ago. In financial terms, it appears to be two years behind, hence you might have heard (more than once) school superintendent state, the information is two years behind. Fiscally speaking, I suppose one could make that argument, however, I am a simple lil' ole guy, so to me, it is less than a year old. That is just how my rusty old rolladex works.

In short, if anyone expects something other than a no vote at the district meeting, I need to see a detailed and up to date, breakdown of town spending on schools.