Hurley town government officials have reported $259,654.37 in bills from the previous administration. Former town supervisor Melinda McKnight said she was tired of getting thrown under the bus for issues beyond her control.
Ulster town supervisor James Quigley, hired months ago as part-time Hurley bookkeeper to make sense of the town’s financial records, reported the unpaid 2023 bills at the June 11 meeting of the Hurley town board. Town bills for 2024 operations — except for special districts — were $505,645.84.
McKnight blamed chronic accounting issues that had plagued the town before she became supervisor. “I was doing my best to correct a situation that had been ongoing for a very long time. Bills weren’t being processed,” she responded.
Quigley said he had to look at vouchers and canceled checks to determine what had been paid and from what account.
“The reason that this exercise is taking so long is that the accounting system that was purchased by the town in 2023 is not functioning properly. It was not set up properly,” Quigley said. “When we went into the data base, we were only able to retrieve checks that were written through April of 2023. There were very few transactions in the data base subsequent to April 23.”
No general ledger
Consulting with external auditors RBT, fired by the town in July 2023, Quigley found two systems that were supposed to be running parallel — one in-house and the other RBT’s, both recording the transactions at the same time.
“That did not happen,” Quigley said. There basically were no accounting records, other than the transactional data.
“And by that I mean bank statements, the cash receipts, and the checks that were issued,” he continued. “There is no general ledger. There is no listing of checks issued. Everything is being re-created manually.”
While admitting the transition from outside accounting to in-house was rough, McKnight said all the pertinent data was there. She said she dealt with the accounting software shortcomings by preparing the reports herself.
RBT was fired, she said, because it didn’t specialize in municipal accounting and was difficult to contact when issues arose.
“In April, in the lead-up to tax season, good luck getting their attention. Revenue lines were not correct. They failed to provide financials in February, April and June,” McKnight said.
At one point, the town’s bank lost and then found a deposit bag, she said. “I inherited a system that was far from perfect and I did my best,” she said
No surplus in 2023
Were the unpaid invoices solely from 2023? Quigley said he could not answer at this time.
“I merely split it down into ’23 and ’24,” he explained. “In consulting with the manual and some peers in the industry, we basically concurred that any bills arising from periods prior to 2023 are to be booked as 2023 expenses, because we can’t go back and restate ’21 or ’22.”
Supervisor Mike Boms reported an error during reconciliation of the 2023 surplus, which was adjusted downward from $296,696.27 to $261,696.27. “We have paid $259,654.37 of 2023 bills in 2024,” Boms reported. Basically. there was no surplus in 2023.
The cleanup continues.
“It may look as if we have spent a lot of money at this point right now — $259,000, for example, were bills that we had to pay that were past due. And not only that, though, there were a couple of vendors who suspended our accounts for non-payment.”
Boms thanked Quigley for going through the paperwork by hand. “And we’re going to have to spend more money to get different software that the Town of Ulster uses that we are going to get also,” Boms said.
The primary is next Tuesday
McKnight said accusations that there was no information in the software from July were “flat-out not true.” Data was entered into the software manually, and she said bills that crossed her desk were paid through December.
McKnight expressed the belief that bills left unpaid were likely submitted late by vendors. She said that happens all the time. McKnight cited bills for 2021 that came in when she took over as supervisor in 2022.
“By the end of 2023, all the expenses and deposits had been entered into the software,” she said, noting she had proof in the form of monthly expense reports generated from the accounting software.
McKnight said nobody reached out to her for information on where or how the information could be accessed. She said she had offered to help, but nobody had taken her up on her offer.
Full slates of candidates supporting McKnight’s and Boms’ perspectives will be on the ballot in the Hurley Democratic primary next Tuesday, June 25.
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