LEWISTON — School officials are confident a newly hired financial controller will help solve financial auditing issues identified in the 2011 audit.
“It’s clear that given the size of our district, we need to devote resources to make things happen,” Superintendent Bill Webster said.
Webster said he has replaced the department’s old business manager position with two others — a controller to handle the department’s financial bookkeeping and an accounting person to manage the department’s grants.
“I have full expectation that there will be tremendous improvements in many areas, not the least of which is comments from the auditors,” Webster said.
According to the city’s Dec. 9 financial audit, released Tuesday night at the Lewiston City Council’s workshop meeting, auditors took issue with the School Department’s financial bookkeeping.
The city’s audit, performed by certified public accountants Runyon Kersteen and Ouellette of Waterville, found several “significant deficiencies” in the way the department relied on the auditors, used cash on hand, filed reports with the federal government and tracked advances for travel.
The auditors defined a significant deficiency as something that could keep employees and managers from detecting or correcting financial errors. The auditors did not find that errors had taken place, however.
“It’s not that we were not balancing the checkbook,” Webster said. “There were a lot of things the auditors had to deal with, and we should be taking care of them.”
For example, auditors found that the School Department maintained three bank accounts for different funds — the special revenue funds, the school lunch program and the adult education fund. Each account was tracked and reconciled by a different person.
Auditors suggested that those accounts be combined into a single account, which will be reconciled by one employee and supervised and reviewed by the controller.
Webster said the School Department has also relied on the audit in the past to find and correct financial errors.
“But we need to make them our financial statements,” Webster said. “We need to present auditors with a more complete product when they walk in the door.”
Auditors Letter: To the Management of the City of Lewiston, Maine and the Lewiston Public Schools
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