The extra $156,000 in library reserves, where it came from, who knew and when

by Linda Baum
Sept. 9, 2013

There is a special meeting of the Middletown Library board this Wednesday, September 11 at 6 pm. The board will go into executive session soon after the public meeting opens. Another public session will follow later that evening, and board action is expected. I encourage residents to attend.

If you’ve been following library news over the last couple of years, you know a lot has gone on, much of it following the installation of an almost entirely new board last year.

On March 1st of this year, the library’s Bayshore, Lincroft and Navesink branches closed following a truly dedicated public effort to keep them open, even for a short while. It came down to money, where about $300K was needed annually to operate all three, not counting renovation or major repairs. Given what was known at the time about available funding, the trustees made the decision to close.

Then in May, an extra $156K materialized. The additional reserve stems from the Township’s 2011 audit, which resulted in the discovery of an error made by auditors earlier in the year. We are not told what the error was, but it suffices to say that this occurrence is out of the ordinary.

Edmunds, the accounting software Middletown uses, is updated by department to reflect the audit results. The Edmunds system should have shown an increase in library reserves of $156K sometime in the last quarter of 2012 – should have, but didn’t. Edmunds system reports dated as recently as April 30th don’t show the extra money. Suddenly, in May it was there.

An important point is that library employees only view what’s on the Edmunds system for the revenue information they need and print what’s there. The Township’s finance department bears full responsibility for the accuracy of what’s listed.

Regardless, Township Committeeman and new library board member Tony Fiore wasted no time pointing a finger at the library’s director. And of course Fiore has made sure to go on record now, after never having voiced an opinion before, that he wouldn’t have approved of the closing of the branches if he’d known. His remarks are disingenuous considering it’s well known that the Township needed those buildings for office space. (The former Bayshore branch now houses the Township offices formerly located at Croyden Hall, and the Lincroft branch will be the new location for the Crossroads Program.)

Other members of our Township Committee have done a good job staying out of this, or appearing to, including current mayor Gerry Scharfenberger and former library trustee Kevin Settembrino, who are up for re-election this year.

While we can only wonder if any member of the Township Committee or library board knew last fall about the extra money, there are two things we do know with certainty:

One, we know that the Edmunds system was first updated to reflect the additional $156K reserve on or about May 1st of this year. We know that because the library has printouts of the Edmunds system report that shows reserve levels in late April and again in early May of this year. See them here. The reports clearly show that the jump occurred on or about the beginning of May 2013. The $209K reserve shown on the May report is the sum of the $156K and a reserve of $53K that the library knew about but that the Township had not yet released for the library’s use.

Further, the library has printouts of the same report for each month dating back to the fall of 2012, and none shows the additional monies.

Two, we know that the Edmunds system has long been the agreed-upon protocol for communication between the Township and the Library. We know that because our Township CFO, Nick Trasente, stated it with crystal clarity in his May 10th memo to Committeeman Fiore. In an excerpt from that memo, Mr. Trasente states, “Each year, after verification of these balances and obtaining adjustments from our auditors, we make this balance available to the library director through Edmunds…” He then goes on to acknowledge the diligence of the library director in monitoring system updates, pretty much confirming the finance department’s failure to make the update timely. You can read Trasente’s May 10th memo here.

Given the damning nature of Trasente’s memo for the Township – the memo is a smoking gun – it’s not surprising that Committeeman Fiore wants to downplay it now. At the August 21st board meeting, he didn’t want to talk about the Edmunds system at all.

Here is a link to the video from the August 21st library board meeting: http://youtu.be/8WBYbllBM5E



See time stamp 1:36:00 on the video to see library director Susan O’Neal discuss the reserve issue. She provides a good summary and chronology of events.

The library trustees are now well aware of the sudden appearance of the reserves in the Edmunds system in May. They should also be aware that the delay in updating the Edmunds system for the reserves is not an isolated problem. Rather, it’s a symptom of the ongoing difficulty the Township is having managing administrative functions, including keeping its accounting system current. Among other issues, the Edmunds system is many months behind on reflecting library bill payments made by the Township. To be clear, while checks may have been cut from the library’s municipal appropriation for vouchers submitted by the library, the Edmunds system does not show the payments until months later. Library trustee Larry Nelsen alluded to this at the August 21st meeting (see time stamp 1:56:30 on the video). Further, Ms. O’Neal has said often that she needs to remind the CFO and his assistant to move year-end reserves into a spending account for the library’s use and that frequent follow-up is required.

These are the facts to the best of my understanding. I welcome input from the Township’s CFO, and I would like the library trustees to address the specific issue of when the Edmunds system update should have been done in line with established protocol. They should also question why the CFO, who must have known that the accounting system was nowhere near up to date, wouldn’t communicate knowledge of a substantial sum of money when he had ample opportunity to do so.

It's Your Town - Video Newsletter for 3/19/12

The It's Your Town - Video Newsletter which documents the Monday night March 19, 20112, meeting of the Middletown Township Committee has been posted online for your viewing pleasure.

This month's meeting was unusual in the sense that it took nearly 2 hours from start to finish, the norm for the past several months have been an hour or less.

At this months meeting there were two public presentations given, one by Monmouth County Deputy Freeholder Director Tom Arnone who spoke about the "Grow Monmouth" program and the other by Middletown's CFO Nick Transente, who rolled out the FY 2012 Municipal budget in his.

There were also a few public hearings on the agenda for various ordinances, one of which was for the sale of the Swim Club and another that pertained to the subdivison of the property owned by Max Weinberg, drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band.

During Public Comments Mr. Don Watson, the person responsible for video recording Committee meetings since February, once again presented the Committee with a DVD for broadcasting on the Township cable access channels. Mayor Fiore however made it clear that there were no intentions on the Township's part to broadcast this or any meeting when asked.




As a companion to the video, you can download a copy of the meeting agenda that contains the proposed resolutions and ordinances that were voted on or presented during the meeting. A box around an item is a link, bringing you further into the document to that resolution or ordinance. At the end of the resolution there will be a link bringing you back to the agenda. Attached to this agenda is also the monthly bill list, so that everyone can see how the Township is spending our tax dollars.

It's Your Town - Newsletter Volume 3, Issue 23-12/05/11

The Holiday season is upon us and in full swing which means that I have been a little busy over the past few days getting the house in order and my shopping taken care and wrapping, so I've been a little behind in my blogging.

Here is the latest issue of It's Your Town Newsletter which covers the December 5 th Middletown Township Committee Workshop meeting. For those in attendance, it was a very short meeting lasting less than 30 minutes and seemed as a nuisances for those that represent the people of the township to be sitting there. Committeeman Settembrino never once pulled his nose away from his iPad, I witnessed him constantly tapping and scrolling between screens.

Committeeman Scharfenberger and CFO Nick Transente seemed equally engaged in their iPad and smart phone respectively speaking.

One of the few pieces of business that was discussed was an ordinance that was introduced to set a new salary structure for non-contractual employees, no discussion took place and it was moved by the Committee to be voted on at the December19 meeting.

Also a special meeting of the Township Committee was scheduled for Monday, December 12 to adopt a resolution to accept the vendor for the MCIA bid proposal that was to be awarded for the Township's solar project. This meeting however was canceled later in the week without explanation.

Read the Newsletter .... Here

Middletown To Introduce Budget Wednesday; Is A 15% Tax Increase Possible?

According to Middletown Township's website the Township Committee will hold a special meeting on June 2, 2010 at 7 p.m for the purpose of introducing the 2010 Municipal, Utility and Solid Waste Budgets. The meeting will be held at the Middletown Arts Center, 36 Church Street, Middletown.

I am not making this up, I hear that the Municipal Budget looks pretty ugly and could contain a possible tax increase of 15% or more. But don't fret just yet, there is also a good possibility that the meeting will be postponed due to scheduling conflicts amongst committee members, a quorum may not be possible for Wednesday night.

But if the meeting does go on as scheduled, how could Mayor Gerry Scharfenberger and Deputy Mayor Tony Fiore even consider voting to introduce a budget with such a tax increase?

After all of his posturing and grandstanding about Governor Christie and his "Tool Box" while attempting to follow the lead of the governor by demonizing Middeltown's teachers and cutting the already defeated Board of Education budget by an additional $2 million dollars, after $11 million had already been stripped away from it by the governor, Scharfenberger would be foolish to think that residents would ever take him serious again on budget issues.

If this budget is introduced as is, the Middletown GOP will finally be seen as the tax and spenders that they really are. Remember last year Gerry and his friends raised the tax rate by 5.2% which pushed the tax rate up 16% over the past 4 years, can Middletown afford that kind of tax increase in just one year? I think not!

If this 15% figure is true (which it could be true due to the $5 million budget defect that exists) then Scharfenberger, Township Administrator Tony Mercantante and our new CFO Nick Transente will have some explaining to do and will have to come up with some very good answers as to why they weren't able to keep the increase close to Christie's proposed budget cap.