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Had the Board received complete, accurate and reliable monthly reports and conducted an annual audit of the Supervisor’s books, records and documents, it may have identified and potentially helped remedy these issues. Without complete, accurate and reliable financial information, the Board cannot effectively monitor the Town’s financial position and available fund balance to make informed decisions. Because the Board and Supervisor did not fulfill their statutory responsibilities, transparency of the Town’s fiscal condition was diminished, as Town residents, taxpayers, OSC and other interested parties did not have access to the Town’s current fiscal activities. Based on our review of the Supervisor’s records, we determined that the Supervisor did not: • Perform monthly bank reconciliations or report the results to the Board, which undermined its responsibility to oversee the Town’s financial operations and safeguard Town resources. • Provide the Board with reports showing budget-to-actual results, trial balances,1 or bank reconciliations, hindering its ability to effectively monitor the Town’s financial operations throughout the year. This report includes nine recommendations that, if implemented, will improve the Town’s financial reporting and help the Board and Supervisor improve the transparency of their fiscal activities. Town officials generally agreed with our recommendations and their response is included in Appendix B. We conducted this audit pursuant to Article V, Section 1 of the State Constitution and the State Comptroller’s authority as set forth in Article 3 of GML. Our methodology and standards are included in Appendix C. The Board has the responsibility to initiate corrective action. A written corrective action plan (CAP) that addresses the findings and recommendations in this report should be prepared and provided to our office within 90 days, pursuant to Section 35 of GML. For more information on preparing and filing your CAP, please refer to our brochure, Responding to an OSC Audit Report, which you received with the draft audit report. We encourage the Board to make the CAP available for public review in the Town Clerk’s (Clerk’s) office. 1 The trial balance is an internal accounting report that lists every account in the general ledger with its balance at a specific point in time. The report is a list of the balances of the accounts in a ledger kept by double entry, with the debit and credit balances shown in separate columns. If the totals of the debit and credit columns are equal, the ledger from which the figures are taken is said to be in balance. It helps to check the accuracy of bookkeeping. 2 Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller