Reflections - Finding the Balance

“Coming together is a beginning,

staying together is progress,

and working together is success.”

Henry Ford

 

 

Milledgeville Presbyterian Church 

 

I climbed steep cement steps to Gretchen's house with dread.

I didn’t dread Gretchen, a part-time nurse, pregnant mother of an eighteen-month-old girl, and a farmer. I dreaded her questions.

Gretchen, the young secretary-treasurer for French Creek Township, had all the paperwork I needed to do the 2021 audit. I hadn’t expected to be responsible for it, but Nancy, who had been the head elected auditor for the past twenty to thirty-years, had died a week earlier from dementia. That left me, with only four years experience, in charge of Carol and Sandi, two other auditors with even less experience. Had I learned enough from Nancy to lead the auditing team and balance the accounts?

That sunny afternoon at the end of January, unspoiled snow surrounded the two-story blue farmhouse but the steps were summer clear. After knocking three times with no response, I opened the storm door, stepped into the mud room, and called, “Gretchen!”

She jogged around a corner, slid across the kitchen floor, and led me to her office. Sitting by a desk the size of a sofa, she patted the chair beside her.

“I’m so glad the elected auditors agreed to audit the books this year. I just got the budget under control when a supervisor recommended hiring the public auditors again.”

I mentally compared the public auditors fee of $5000 to $7500 with the ten dollars per hour the state allotted elected auditors. If I couldn’t guide the inexperienced team to balance the books, I would disappoint this nine-month-pregnant woman and cost the township lots of money. I gritted my teeth.

Her eyes glistened with hope and trust. “I’ll help any way I can. Call. Email. Come over with questions.” She clicked her mouse pulling an expense ledger onto the computer screen, I’ll pull up records and we can find the answers together.” Then her voice turned grave. “I'm worried about my liabilities.”

The way liabilities rolled off her tongue gave me the shivers. I vaguely understood the word to mean money deducted from people’s paychecks and paid to various governments at year’s end, but not physically held in an account. I had no idea how to calculate the amounts.

Gretchen’s face clouded. “I use a computer program to calculate the deductions. It says I have four cents extra withholding. What do I do with the four cents? Put a penny back in the fellas’ paychecks at the end of the year?”

I patted her arm. “Don’t worry. I have to round everything to the nearest dollar on the report. You can ignore the four cents or put them in the paychecks.”

Gretchen sighed and rubbed her abdomen. “As soon as the January bank statements arrive, I’ll box the files and give you a call.”

A week later, holding her precious five-pound baby boy, who yawned and wiggled his fingers, Gretchen nodded to the township financial records on the bench in the mud room. Though I would much rather have reached for the two-day old newborn, I took a couple trips lugging the records to my car—my responsibility to guard until I returned them after the audit. As if tied to me with an invisible umbilical cord, the boxes stayed with me, traveling back and forth to auditing sessions and sitting on my dresser while I slept at night.

With the omicron variant circulating that winter, I needed to find a place for auditing which would keep everyone safe while working indoors for hours on end—a large room. The township building, a garage where trucks and tractors parked, was large enough but Carol said the diesel fumes exacerbated her breathing issues. The township building wouldn’t work.

When I’d called newly appointed auditor Sandi, to thank her for accepting the position, she’d said we could work at her church. “No one’s there during the week. The doors are always unlocked. Walk up the ramp at the back. The first door on the left is the classroom we can use.”

On a snowy-blowy day, Spence and I trudged to the Milledgeville Presbyterian Church and checked out the room. A ten-foot table sat in the middle of the airy twenty by twenty-foot space. Only a few small bookcases and a plastic couch lined the walls. Perfect.

Because of COVID the previous year, Nancy had kept Carol and I separate. Nancy also did a lot of work alone. She’d seemed a little confused when I helped her clear several discrepancies. Had she resolved the rest? This year, all three auditors had to understand the entire process in case any of us couldn’t audit next year. We needed to work together—as long as we could stay safe.

Masks would keep us safe. I dialed Carol’s phone number. She let me know, quite cheerfully, that she wouldn’t wear a mask. Thinking of the hours we’d be together inside, I braved the impertinent question. “Are you vaccinated?’”

Carol paused. A. Long. Time. “I choose not to answer that question.”

So I ordered n95 masks for Sandi and me and set the starting date for February 7, the day Sandi said she would be ready after her shoulder surgery on February 1.

She wasn’t ready on February 7. Trouble with her pain medications kept her home.

“Take as long as you need,” I told her. “Carol and I will get organized.” Best for Sandi, on her first day, not to realize how clueless Carol and I were anyway.

I arrived a few minutes before Carol, turned up the thermostat, and set out folding chairs—one at each end of the table and one in the middle. I took the middle because it gave more room for the boxes. I strapped on the n95 mask.

 

Boxes of Township Financial Records and n95 Mask

Carol kept her coat on and sat at the far end of the table. “I mean no disrespect to Nancy. She was great. Kind and smart.” Carol tapped her pen on the table and switched to a teacher-voice which surprised me since she’d been a hospice nurse. “We’ll have no Nancys here. She did lots of work on her own. But sometimes, well…you know.” Carol tucked her chin to her chest and looked over her round glasses. “Agreed?”

“Definitely.” I placed my hands on the table, fingers spread wide. “We work and learn together.”

“Okay. We do this together.” Carol returned to her regular voice. “When I worked with Nancy I was her monkey. I just did what she told me. I had no idea what I was doing. I have no idea where to begin.”

“We should start backwards.”

Carol raised her eyebrows.

“You know how Nancy pointed at numbers on a report at the end and we had no idea what they meant?”

Carol narrowed her eyes. “Yeaaaaaaaaaah?”

Grabbing the blank thirty-page worksheet for the audit and a copy of last year’s audit, I said, “Let’s highlight the boxes Nancy filled in last year and sort by categories.”

Carol looked at me as if I’d said we’d sail to Hawaii and buy pineapples for tomorrow’s breakfast.

“Really. The paper lists codes for kinds of revenues and expenses. So, when we check the bills against the computer ledger and the bank summaries—we’ve done that before, you remember…”

She nodded, looking a little less puzzled.

“Then we’ll understand why those codes matter. We’ll make sure every transaction has an appropriate code—a three hundred if a revenue and a four hundred if an expense.”

Carol saluted me with an orange highlighter. I used pink. As if painting an orange and pink sunset, our spirits raised a little with every box we colored. Progress.

She clicked the top onto the marker. “Now what?”

“Let’s start with the state funds. Gretchen filed that report at the end of January so we’d get our liquid fuels revenue.” I handed Carol the bank statements and a folder of bills. I kept Gretchen’s state report and opened a notebook to list the amounts of bills under code numbers. “Cross your fingers her numbers are correct. We can’t change them now.”

Carol smirked. “You mean pray. We’re in a church.”

We plodded along until a woman leaned against the door jamb.

“Hello,” I said. “We’re the auditors. Sandi said we could work in your church.”

“I know. I’m Nadina. I came to practice the piano for the church service this weekend. I hope I won’t bother you.”

Carol and I straightened. “No,” we said in unison.

“We’d love to hear you play,” I said.

Carol nodded like a bobblehead.

“What a Friend We Have in Jesus” floated from the sanctuary across the hall. I relaxed as mellow as if I’d just finished a yoga routine instead of reading the prices for anti-skid and sharpening plows.

The next day Sandi joined us with her right arm in a sling and an ice pack for her shoulder. She shrugged off her coat, plopped onto the chair by the door, and rested her sling against a pillow on her lap. “It’s okay. I’m left handed. What do we do first?”

She wore a mask that day and for several days afterwards but eventually gave them up. I didn’t question her choice. More important things to do.

Distributing the state papers among the three of us, we finished checking the expenditures—all had paper trails and four hundred codes. “Get your calculators, girls.” I waited while phone and tablet apps booted. Sandi called the numbers for items in the machine repair code.

She hesitated when she finished, then asked, “What did you get, Janet?”

“Fourteen thousand, eight hundred seventy-six dollars and eighty-six cents. Is that what you two got?” I looked up from my tablet. Sandi and Carol grinned at each other.

“Yes.” Carol swept her finger from herself toward Sandi. “We communicate with our eyes.”

Bonding already? Terrific. We totaled the rest of the expenditures and checked the revenues. Now for the big test—balancing the state fund.

While I held my breath, Sandi called numbers.

We all tapped the beginning bank balance.

Added revenues.

Subtracted expenditures.

And got the ending bank balance?

Yes!

The state fund balanced.

I raised my fists over my head. “WOOHOO!”

Carol and Sandi exchanged indulgent smiles.

“We’re half done,” Sandi said calmly. “We can finish this week.”

Slipping the folders into the portable file box, I snapped it shut. 

This time Carol and I exchanged looks—creased foreheads, concerned eyes, and pressed lips. The general fund had more than twice as much money as the state, many more transactions, and Gretchen hadn’t balanced it for an official report. Pesky problems had plenty of room to hide. Should I dampen Sandi’s enthusiasm on her first day of auditing?

   

Church Sign

End of Part 1