Monadnock Ledger - MASCENIC District spends $254K by mistake Bond money was misappropriated By Ashley Saari Monadnock Ledger-Transcript Wednesday, January 7, 2015 GREENVILLE — Review by the State Department of Education has revealed that as much as $254,189 of state building aid anticipated to assist with bond payments for the construction of Highbridge Hill Elementary School was spent on items not approved for use, which the district will now have to make up to the state through reduced building aid for the elementary school bond over the next 12 years. The N.H. Department of Education School Safety and Facilities Management Department has been reviewing the elementary school building project for nearly a year, explained DOE statistical clerk Marjorie Schoonmaker during Monday’s School Board meeting. Most of the impermissible expenditures identified are associated with short-life items, such as computer equipment, which were not supposed to be paid for through the construction bond, she told the board. Cleaning supplies, furniture, music equipment and instruments, 78 Dell computers, two laptops, 24 iPads, 25 mini-iPads and 10 routers make up the majority of the items that were not intended to be covered by the building aid. The total cost of expenses not permitted to be covered by the bond is $199,582. The district has also failed to provide supporting invoices for as much as $54,000 in expenses, the vast majority of which includes work done by Clerk of the Works Gary Somero or Steve Lennon, who sometimes assisted in the Clerk of the Works’ duties. Without the invoices, the Department of Education cannot expend building aid. In an interview Wednesday, Schoonmaker explained that when she began to review Mascenic’s building aid requests, there were closer to $900,000 in questionable expenditures. The Department of Education and representatives from the school district spent several months sorting through the questionable expenses and many were found to be valid. In the end, the district was still left with the $254,000 in expenditures that can not be covered by building aid. “My question is: why, and how did this happen?” said School Board member Jim Kingston. “Why were these things charged, if they weren’t allowed, and why are there invoices missing? It’s just too big a number to say, ‘Yeah, OK.’ Were people unaware that these weren’t allowed? I don’t know what the conversation was, but I think we owe taxpayers an explanation.” Due to the miscalculation, the school will not be receiving as much building aid from the state in the coming years to pay the yearly construction bond payment for Highbridge — at a rate of $11,226 less than projected for the next 12 years. School Board member Jeff Salmonson agreed that there should be some accountability. “I’m a little disturbed that taxpayers passed a bond, and now we’re coming from behind and having to come up with additional funds.” Judith Fillion, the director of the division of school safety and facilities management at DOE, said in an interview Wednesday that there is a continual conversation between the state and the school districts it works with regarding what is and is not allowed under state building aid. It is also in the state statute rules, and in the district’s construction manual. Some of the items at issue, such as maintenance items and computers, are clearly not allowed, said Fillion. “It is something they knew about,” said Fillion. However, she said the Department of Education does not view the expenditures as malicious or deliberate. In some cases, she said, those rules can become lost or unknown in the case of a turnover in the business administrator, school board or superintendent. “I think it was an oversight, and not done purposefully at all,” said Fillion. School Board members questioned the loss of supporting invoices for work done by Somero and Lennon, as well as a few additional lost invoices for things like supplies and septic permits. If those items had supporting documentation, said Schoonmaker, it’s likely the costs would be covered under the state building aid. If the district is able to find and provide those documents, even at this point, that aid can still be recovered, said Schoonmaker. Salmonson said the chain of custody relating to those reports lies with Somero and the business administrator, who at the time of Highbridge Hill’s construction was Jenifer Krook. Krook’s contract was not renewed for this year. Somero said he did not have an immediate explanation for the missing invoices, without reviewing the documentation. He said he would review his records in search of any supporting invoices. However, Supt. Ruthann Goguen told the board that the district had already searched exhaustively for the missing invoices. The School Board is scheduled to meet next on Jan. 13, for a public hearing on the budget in the Mascenic High School auditorium at 6 p.m.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 18:54:01 +0000
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