Reflections - Strained and Off-Balance

Township Sign

Stepping into Nancy’s kitchen on the last Monday in January, I came face to face with trouble.

Boxes crammed with file folders covered her counters. Colored pencils, pads of paper, calculators, and an audited stamp waited on the plastic tablecloth. Two chairs and a step stool flanked the table that, pushed against the wall, occupied half of the sixteen square foot of floor space. The room was ready for auditing French Cheek Township’s finances. 

Nancy wasn’t.

Instead of beaming at her two helpers, resting her arms on her belly, and assigning tasks in her experienced-auditor voice, she rubbed a thumb against her chin. Her sweater slipped off one shoulder, and her unkempt hair resembled a robin’s nest. Her ashen face drooped. “I don’t know what to tell you ladies to do.” She reached into a box, pulled out stapled packs of computer-generated reports, and tossed them onto the table. After twenty-one years of auditing the former secretary-treasurer’s handwritten paper ledgers, Nancy stared at the computer-printout ledgers from Zina, the township’s new secretary-treasurer.

But different didn’t necessarily mean worse. 

Carol, the new auditor pursed her lips and broadcast bewilderment through widening eyes.

Hoping Nancy’s stress didn’t trigger a stroke, I pulled out the middle chair and sat. “We can verify expenditures. At the November township meeting, Zina showed me how she stapled a computer receipt to each bill.”  

Carol exhaled a whistling breath and sat beside me. 

Nancy reached into the box of general fund expenditures, pulled the folder labeled January, and dropped it in front of me. 

I opened it. “Uh-oh.” A stack of checkbook stubs, that the former secretary-treasurer had used, sat on lose bills. No computer slips. “This isn’t what Zina showed me. Maybe we should work backward.” I closed the folder and handed it to Nancy.

She chuckled and exchanged it for one marked December. “Zina changed her procedures after the first few months.”

I opened the folder. A stack of bills with stapled check receipts greeted me. “Better.” I pointed at the printouts. “Do we have a ledger?”

Nancy sat on the step stool and shuffled through the pile of printouts. “Here’s a general ledger.” She passed it to Carol and shuffled some more. “This one is expenditures by code. I’ll need the code totals for our reports.” She set it in front of her.

Picking up the first bill, I read “Check eighty-five eighty-two for one hundred twenty-nine dollars and ninety cents to Allan Hart and Sons.” I flipped the slip to see if the amount matched the amount on the bill. It did. “It’s for tractor parts,” a valid expenditure for the township.

A pink tinge returned to Nancy’s cheeks. “What’s the code?”

Squinting, I scanned the bill and the receipt again. No code number labeling the subcategory of funds. “Not listed here.” 

“Some of my entries have codes.” Carol ran her finger down a column of numbers and stopped. “Not that one.” She drew the pink highlighter through the transaction on her printout.

“It was paid on December ninth.” I pointed to the dates at the bottom of the category column on Nancy’s ledger. “Look for it by date and amount.”

Nancy flipped page after page. “Here it is.” She made a check with a blue pencil. “We’ll ask Zina to put codes on the receipts and summaries next time.”

I checked the receipt with a green pencil and turned to the next bill.

Last year, I’d audited all twelve general fund folders in one session while the third auditor checked state expenditures and Nancy audited revenues. After completing the audit in fifteen hours, we had two questions for the former secretary-treasurer. 

This year, after three and a half hours of staring at figures, we’d audited four months of general fund bills and listed six questions.

I arched my back to ease my tense shoulders, collected colored pencils, and handed the question list to Nancy. “We made progress. Now that we know how Zina’s system works, the task will be easier.”

Nancy grinned, straightened her sweater, and glanced over the questions. “I’ll call Zina tonight. Come back Thursday. That’ll give me time to orient myself.”

Thursday, Nancy zipped through the state expenditures. “These records are in good shape. Zina left me a highway to follow. ”

Carol and I checked six more months of general fund expenditures. When Dan, the roadmaster, taped his receipts to a sheet of paper, the tape obscured the amount of cents. Hunting for the exact expense on the computer-printout ledger, Carol muttered, “We’re on a dirt road over here.”

Every succeeding weekday, Carol and I obeyed Nancy’s mantra. Follow the money. We checked transfers in and out of bank accounts. Zina had made multiple mistakes figuring out if expenditures were general or state, but she corrected the errors and left a clear trail. Feeling confident, I checked each monthly statement with a green pencil and stamped each of the seven account folders. Audited.

After six work sessions totaling nineteen and a half hours, Nancy stood at the end of the table, rested her arms on her belly, and said in a confident voice, “We’ve accounted for state funds, payroll, bank accounts, and general fund expenditures. Something’s not balancing in general revenues. I’ll work on the balance tonight. When you ladies come tomorrow, we could

But the next morning, Nancy’s weary voice sighed through the phone. “Zina isn’t answering my calls. I’ll have to email her. I think she recorded some revenues as expenses. Don’t come until Monday. That will give me the weekend to balance this.”

Monday morning, two weeks after we’d started the audit, Nancy’s resigned voice came through the phone. “Don’t come today. Zina isn’t answering my emails either. I think she recorded a couple revenues as expenditures. I’ll take a copy of my questions to the township meeting tonight. We can work Tuesday.”

I rode to the meeting with my neighbor Kathy. 

We walked through the township garage past two monster trucks smelling of gasoline. In the front sat two rows of folding chairs, eight in each row. At a table sat two of the three supervisors—Jeff, who had been part of the conspiracy to dump the old secretary-treasurer to hire Zina, and John, who Spence and I had helped elect to add civility into the meetings. Gavin, the young whippersnapper who beat Kathy’s write-in total by six or seven votes, didn’t attend.

Zina, the secretary-treasurer, sat at the end of the table, typed into the township’s computer, and turned her head to chat with John.

Trying to be a diplomat for the auditors, I set my purse in the front row, signed the attendance sheet, and forced my lips into a friendly smile. “We’re getting close to finishing the audit. Nancy thinks she found the balance problem. Now that we’ve learned your system, next year’s audit will go faster.”

Zina flipped a strand of straight black hair over her shoulder, blushed, and flashed a micro smile. “Don’t worry. Everything will work out.”

Turning away from Zina, I spotted Kathy in the back row. I picked up my purse and moved back with her. 

Township Flag

The back row filled.

Folks picked up chairs from the front row and squeezed them into the back row or placed them behind us next to the huge truck tires. 

Jeff set out more chairs which folks put in the aisle by the trucks rather than sit in front.

Excited to make a report, newly elected supervisor John skipped to the new business section.

6 New Business

1. Backhoe
2. Plow
3. Audit

With an ear to ear grin between his mustache and beard, John reported finding a used backhoe in good shape that could dig out clogged drainage ditches so we wouldn’t have the expense of hiring a contractor to do the work. 

Zina pulled out her cell phone. “I forgot to call Gavin so he can join the conversation.” Zina put Gavin on speaker phone.

He answered from Maine where he’d gone hunting, but none of the people sitting on the folding chairs could understand a word he said.

John glanced at the Meeting Agenda. “Oh. I forgot the public comment. Any comments?”

Spence, arriving late from a day in Cleveland working on lead safe issues, squeezed a chair in beside me. 

Nancy stood. “The auditors haven’t balanced the books. We’re twelve thousand dollars off.” She waved a paper. “This is a copy of the email I sent Zina with the questions about possible revenues that were listed as expenditures. I need those straightened out to make the accounts balance.” Nancy walked to the front table and handed the paper to Zina. 

Zina flipped the paper upside down beside the computer. “This is the seventeenth email you’ve sent.” She typed more notes.

The meeting continued with news that beavers blocked drain pipes near the Boy Scout camp which caused Creek Road to flood and the berm to crumble. Zina read of last month’s minutes and her financial report before John told the saga of a new snow plow blade being too big for the township truck.

Zina put both hands on the table. “I have a request for the supervisors.”

Their heads swiveled toward her.

“I want to hire a certified public accounting firm to do the audit and submit the needed reports this year.” She pulled her pen drive out of the computer and held it up. “I’ll give them the pen drive, and they do everything. They’ll provide a report about things we can improve next year. It will cost three thousand dollars.”

Gavin’s voice muttered something over the phone. Then his voice clearly said, “We need public auditors instead of the elected ones.”

Jeff’s brow furrowed. He looked from Zina to Nancy to me to Zina. “Can’t you sit down with the auditors and work out the problems?”

She slammed her fist onto the table and peered down her nose. “No. I’m done. They don’t understand the computer.”

John scowled and looked at me.

I answered his scowl in a soft voice. “The computer isn’t the problem.” 

He nodded because, like me, he’d sat through meeting after uncomfortable meeting last year with Nancy and Zina sparring over the finances. 

• “You’re putting that in the wrong account.” 

“No I’m not. PSATS told me to put it there.”

• “You needed to transfer that money to the fire department the day you got the check.”

“They told me I had two weeks to do it.”

• “You had twenty dollar late fees for Selective Insurance four times this year. Why can’t you pay their bill on time?”

“I negotiated with them. They refunded the fees.”

John shuffled his agenda sheets. “Three thousand is a lot of money.”

Jeff stared at Zina’s pouting face. “Since this is the first year that everything is on the computer, having a professional audit makes sense. Just for this year though.”

Gavin and Jeff voted to hire a public auditing firm. John voted no. 

Nancy stood again. “Will you provide a copy of the audit report so that we can see the suggestions?”

With a triumphant smile, Zina glared at Nancy. “You’re done. Bring the documents to my house tomorrow and turn in your time slips.” 

I leaned against Spence’s arm. “Did I just get fired?”

He rubbed my shoulder. “No. A hired employee can’t fire an elected public official. Besides, they can’t hire an auditor to audit the auditors.”

“Actually, Pennsylvania does audit township auditors occasionally. But auditors finish their work first.”

While the supervisors approved employee time sheets and signed checks, I stewed. I’d taken the auditor job to support my community. I enjoyed the challenge of making everything balance. But, I didn’t like being fired, for the first time, at age seventy-one. I gritted my teeth. Blood throbbed in my ears. 

Normally, the auditors check every paper, balance the accounts, and write numbers onto blanks in the state's paperwork. Then Nancy stands at the next township meeting and says, “The accounts were complete and balanced.” Because of Zina’s refusal to answer any more of Nancy’s questions, we couldn’t do either of those jobs this year. 

Resenting the nineteen and a half hours I worked for nothing, I dreamed of adding columns of numbers. 

The next morning, I woke with a plan and called Nancy. “I want to write a report about what we actually accomplished. May I come over to check the records for a few facts before you take the files back to Zina?”

“I already started one. I’ll read it to you.” She cleared her throat. “Just like our township, there are highways and dirt roads. With an abundance of reports (dirt roads), the auditors struggled to balance the audit report. Dirt Road One. We used reports to confirm receipts. This is the monthly files of purchases paid. Each should have a check number and code. Many didn’t.” 

Papers rustled through the phone and Nancy droned on. 

Sheesh. I didn’t want to sign my name to a personal essay with dirt road metaphors. We needed a report as dry as the secretary’s township meeting minutes and with lots of passive verbs to avoid laying blame. When Nancy stopped, I lied. “My sentiments exactly.” I paused to choose polite words. “But we need to be objective. Just list facts.”

“Oh.” Nancy’s voice sounded puzzled. “I thought I was being objective.”

We met in the afternoon and searched the boxes of records. I jotted facts in a spiral notebook.

• Payroll checking. Three check numbers, 5156, 5185, and 5189, were not used to pay employees and had no record of being voided. 
• Computer-generated reports. The Vendor Balance Detail sheets omitted a payment to Erie Tech Inc. for $65.12 and to Zina Smith for $111.28.
• Expenditures. On March 11, Zina reimbursed the roadmaster for his change from a twenty dollar bill rather than for the amount of his purchase at Farm & Home. 

The first week of the audit, I had giggled, marked this reimbursement error with green pencil, and showed the mistake to Nancy. 

She’d said, “For a dollar fifty cents overpayment, let it go. Dan probably drove his own vehicle to get the parts and didn’t charge us mileage.” But the day after Zina dismissed us from the audit, Nancy changed her mind. She tapped her finger on my notebook. “Put it in the summary.”

I stuffed the spiral notebook with ten pages of notes into my tote bag, and Nancy packed files in the boxes for Zina. 

While reliving the frustration of unanswered questions, I spent a day and a half writing three drafts to get a dry, this-is-this, that-is-that distillation of our auditing struggles. If Zina had answered Nancy’s questions, we could have balanced the books, and I wouldn’t be embarrassed by a virtual, if not an actual, firing. 

The computer-printout ledgers were different than the old hand-written ones. Not worse. Nancy trying to teach Zina how to manage the finances and Zina resenting the interference had strained their relationship. The difference in the head auditor’s relations with the old and new secretary-treasurers? A difference for the worse.

This-is-This, That-is-That Auditor Report