CLARIFICATION: Greenwood’s prepared statement comes as a response to the audit conducted by Honey & Associates, which they say they found deficiencies with the Town Clerk’s financial records for the 2015-16 calendar years.
CARROLL-The outgoing town supervisor says the State Comptroller’s office is sending an audit team to conduct an investigation after an independent audit of the clerk’s books revealed that thousands of dollars are unaccounted for.
“We just felt with the new regime coming in the books should be audited,” said Town of Carroll Supervisor Jack Jones. “The town clerk is the only one who handles the money.”
“The clerk’s books have never been audited in 10 years,” Jones said. “They’ve audited my books, they’ve audited judicial books, but they’ve never audited the clerk’s books.
Jones, who is set to retire at the end of the year, will be replaced by Laura Greenwood. Greenwood was the Town’s Clerk for nearly 12 years.
At a public meeting on Wednesday night, she read a prepared statement to respond to the audit’s findings.
“This town has no policies,” said Greenwood. “Everything is by practice. We need to be consistent, and we all need to be on the same page.”
“I have never seen any town where the supervisor just makes a budget and doesn’t talk to the water or highway guy to see what they need for the year.”
According to Jones, money is missing from the town’s swimming program which has been stable with a budget cost of $16,000 per year.
The town began to probe the financial issues of the swimming program earlier this year and realized that the actual deposits were less than half the amount of money per year than what the former director, Anna Gifford, indicated to them.
News Editor Matt Hummel contributed to this report.
Why was Mrs Greenwoods reading of the audit (which showed no wrongdoing) not published even though you were there recording it?