Southtowns Record

Village of Gowanda - Sewer Financial Operations (2019M-199)

Government
Village of Gowanda
Posted by publisher
Dec 20, 2019
Kind
State audit
Topics
Water, sewer and drainage, Audits and oversight, Budget and taxes

Publisher's summary

Because the Board did not adopt realistic budgets, the sewer fund incurred operating deficits and a decline in its overall financial health. The Board overestimated revenues by $379,000 in fiscal years 2014-15 through 2018-19, resulting in net operating deficits in the sewer fund totaling $144,000. The Board also did not annually review contractual revenues, resulting in potential unrealized revenue totaling approximately $295,000. Finally, the Board did not document a basis for, or adequately monitor, shared service costs, resulting in possible sewer fund inequities. However, with rate increases in effect and the adoption of more realistic revenue estimates in 2018-19 and 2019-20, there has been marked improvement.

Original document

Text · page 6 of 14

$506,250, or 15 percent. However, annual operation and maintenance costs over
the past three years averaged approximately $806,000 (Figure 2). Accordingly,
at the contractual subsidy rate of 75 percent, the annual payment from DOCCS
would be approximately $605,000, or an additional amount of over $98,000, but
officials have not requested an increase. As a result, the Village did not realize
potential revenues approximating $295,000 over the three years.

 Figure 2: Sewer Fund – Comparison of Actual Expenditures to DOCCS
 Contribution
  2016-17  2017-18  2018-19  Total
 Expenditures  a
  $929,220  $798,764  $690,837  $2,418,821
 75 percent of Expenditures  $696,915  $599,073  $518,128  $1,814,116
 Less: DOCCS Annual
 Contribution  $506,250  $506,250  $506,250  $1,518,750
 Difference  $190,665  $92,823  $11,878  $295,366
 a Total expenditures have been adjusted from reported expenditures to include $35,754 in expenditures
 erroneously recorded in the capital projects fund in 2016-17; and to exclude debt-related principal and
 interest payments totaling $53,227 in 2018-19.

Current officials told us that they were not aware that the DOCCS contribution
amount should be addressed annually and continued billing DOCCS based on
past practice. Because officials were not monitoring these contractual revenues
and were overestimating revenues in the annual budget, the sewer fund
experienced financial condition problems.

The Board Did Not Allocate Shared Service Costs Equitably
The Board did not ensure that the sewer fund paid its appropriate share for
shared service costs or monitor actual expenditures to help ensure costs were
allocated in an equitable manner. The Village’s three operating funds (general,
water and sewer) share Department of Public Works (DPW) employees and
certain other costs including payroll-related benefits (e.g., health insurance,
retirement), insurance (e.g., general liability, workers’ compensation), vehicle
replacements and administrative duties. Each fund includes its portion of the
shared service costs in its operating budgets. For example, current payroll
allocations are based on expected time spent by employees working in each
department or vehicles purchased based on the amount of time used by each
department.

For the fiscal years 2014-15 through 2018-19, we reviewed payroll costs and
shared service expenditures totaling approximately $1.18 million5 to determine

5 This amount is the sewer fund share of the combined operating funds’ total expenditures of approximately
$3.19 million for 10 allocations. See Appendix B for the expenditures reviewed.

4  Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller