Seeley draws map of future
Action plan responds to audit citing village’s fiscal inadequacies
The Daily Mail
Nov. 14, 2009

CATSKILL — Weeks after the Office of the State Comptroller issued an audit report that pointed to deficiencies within the Village of Catskill’s bookkeeping and fiscal management practices, Catskill Village President Vincent Seeley has presented to the Village Board a corrective action plan.

He will send the plan to the Comptroller later this year.

Catskill’s property assessments have risen by about $30,000 since 2005, Seeley said at Monday’s Board meeting, a number that represented more cars on Village roads and more families requiring Village services.

“We are now faced with the reality that we need to make adjustments to our corporate structure, administration and staffing to meet current and future responsibilities,” Seeley’s plan executive summary reads.

“It is our job as a Board to sit down and map this out,” Seeley added.

The plan’s goals include ensuring that the Village Board implements proper controls for fiscal oversight. It also allows the Village to restructure the Clerk’s office and duties as well as to consider hiring a village manager, a comptroller or other business management resources.

Seeley said he is not making excuses for the problems that state auditors brought to his attention but said that managing the Village’s finances has become too grand an undertaking for the three full-time and one part-time staff of the Clerk’s office.

He explained that Clerk’s office is responsible for more than 100 subaccounts and more than 20 bank accounts.

Upon the Comptroller’s request, each capital project, such as the current sewer separation work on Main Street, has its own bank account.

The Clerk’s office also manages tax collection accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll as well as health care benefits, retirement benefits, audits and all banking.

The Clerk’s office may see thousands of invoices a year, Clerk/Collector Carolyn Pardy said.

Seeley suggested that a Village comptroller could be responsible for all things monetary whereas Pardy handles a number of requests from attorneys and others every day.

Seeley presented a financial plan timeline, as well.

The Village has upgraded information technology security, as per the State Comptroller’s request.

Effective immediately, the Clerk will present a financial update at Board meetings.

The Board has begun to conduct detailed financial reviews. Later this month department heads will start filing monthly synopses of their department’s activities.

Village employees can meet with employees of other municipalities to trade ideas for efficiency or to train using top-grade technology, Seeley said.

Before the end of the year the trustees will develop a restructuring plan, the Clerk will review the year’s filings and the positions of clerk and treasurer, which were combined through a local law in 1960, could be separated.

Invoices will be randomly audited biweekly by the Clerk beginning in December.

Seeley will schedule early next year a followup audit with the Comptroller’s Office and public financial information sessions.

Seeley said some recommendations from the Comptroller were unfeasible, including improving security around the Village’s computer servers. Currently, employees can only access the room in which the server is kept on an as-needed basis.

His response to the Comptroller also includes information about the Village’s debt-to-asset ratio, which Seeley said, is low.

The Village brings in roughly $6 million annually, Seeley said, and pays back less 12 percent of that, or about $740,000, for debt recovery. He said he believes the Village needs to keep savings in the bank but should pay cash for items when possible to avoid paying interest on loans. The Comptroller, he said, preferred that the Village take out more bonds.

The Board agreed to comply with the plan Seeley presented.

Trustee James Chewens said he found the Comptroller’s “dogging” the Village over a few voucher oversights ironic, given the condition of the State’s finances.