The latest find was revealed this week when the Township Committee approved a resolution closing the accounts for more than $6 million in previously approved expenditures and accounts dating back to 1991 that were never spent.
Uribe said most of the funds are related to unfunded accounts or money that was shifted within the budget.
But he said $1.5 million of it will be returned to the general fund as surplus.
"This is a good clean-up of the general capital fund," he said. "Why it wasn't done in the past, I have no idea."
Uribe worked some similar magic in March when he reviewed accounts between 1998 and 2010. That freed up another $1 million that helped balance the current budget.
"I realize every year when we close the books, we have to close those transactions, it hasn't been done for years," he said. "I started going back to the 1980s, and then the 1990's. For some reason these transactions were not actively processed."
Township Administrator Joseph Manning said such found money has been discovered in the past, but said Uribe is "taking it to the next level. That is his job and he is doing a good job."
Uribe took the CFO post in June 2014, replacing former CFO Peter Fresulone, who left for medical reasons and later died in July 2014.
"This is an active review that is really, really involved and very labor intensive," he said
"This is money that can be anticipated in the current fund as revenue."
This is terrific news. However, who was responsible for the lack of financial diligence and managing a process that would have retired these accounts, and diverted these significant funds so they would not have languished without interest earnings, and possibly deferring other loans, along the way. I hope Vic DeLuca (our Mayor) and Joe Manning will provide insight on how this could have occurred, and what they are doing to avoid a repeat in the future.
ReplyDeleteWhen will he public see a report as to where this money was and how it went missing for so long? That's a lot of bucks!
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