Sunday, January 30, 2011

Trouble Paying Bills? So seems Dumont.

It seems for that for those who have trouble keeping up with the utility bills, you are not alone. It appears that borough hall is having trouble paying them too. It seems that for some months the bill is not paid at all...

PSEG 2010 Statements

As you are looking through them, you may have noticed empty pages. According to the borough clerk for some pages

Finance is having trouble locating the June statement and has requested a copy from PSE&G. PSE&G said they would mail it and as soon as we receive it I will forward to you.

Why are bills that are just months old missing? Is the finance department having trouble with record keeping? This does not look very good for a department who was cited in 2009 and again in 2010 for:

Internal controls regarding the preparation of the Borough's general ledger be reviewed to ensure that the general ledgers are complete and reconciled with the subsidiary ledgers and records on a monthly basis

by the external auditor. In other words, the bills were not being paid on time. Meanwhile the clerk advises

any bills which have shut-off notice is due to the receipt of the bill after the bills list has been generated

Huh?  Does that square with the bills list approved by the third Tuesday of each and every month?  Why were there no payments in some months?  Does this pattern represent a borough in healthy financial condition?

Where was the CFO?  Where was the oversight from our council's finance chair in those years? I hope this year's finance chair can get a handle on what's going on in the finance department.

Did you see Sunday's Record Article on PSE&G proposing to report 60+ day delinquent payers to credit reporting agencies?  What do think that will happen to Dumont's AA ratings from S&P?  How much more will Dumont's future borrowing costs multiply once this payment record is known to lenders?

UPDATE: Duplicate statements (presumably replacing the ones missing) are located here.