LEYDEN — An audit of the town’s finances found Leyden is in a “pretty solid position,” according to auditor Tony Roselli of Roselli, Clark and Associates.
Roselli presented his findings on an audit of the town’s finances for the 2024 fiscal year to the Selectboard on Nov. 3, noting the books were easy to balance. Still, he wanted to make sure the town was aware of a $4,000 deficit in the deputy collector fund and $4,000 deficit for police department details.
“There were no difficulties encountered during the audit,” Roselli said. “Nothing material that we would say was a misstatement or a mistake made by the accountant or treasurer.”
Roselli explained that a deputy collector account is a fund used by the tax collector to cover collecting expenses, and unless the town is able to figure out where the deficit came from, it will need to be included on the tax recap, an annual financial report towns submit each year to the state in order to set the tax rate.
“It looks like it’s been there for at least a year, maybe longer. So at this point you need to make a decision. Is it a permanent deficit that needs to be raised on the tax recap or was there a coding error,” Roselli said. “The easiest way to get rid of that is to raise it on the tax recap.”
Accountant Angelica Desrosiers and Tax Collector Susan Bobe said they have already been working to address issues flagged by Roselli in the audit, and believe the deficit was due to a change in collecting systems.
“The previous collector used the deputy collector fund; the current collector uses the revenue fund, so it offsets the revenue. So it’s just two different systems and when we crossed over they just got lost in the wash a bit,” Desrosiers said.
Rosetti said there was an additional $4,000 deficit in the police detail account, which Desrosiers said was due to the Broadband Committee only funding half of what was required for police details needed when the broadband infrastructure was installed, and it would need to be funded this year.
Rosetti said the audit did not find much that the town was not already working to address, except noting there were a few accounts with small balances, such as $12 in a retiree health insurance account, that had not seen any activity in years. If the town is no longer using those accounts, they should be closed out and funds rolled back into the general ledger.