MACHIAS — The Washington County Budget Advisory Committee reviewed budget requests Tuesday for administration, the finance department, probate, deeds and buildings and grounds as members work toward completing a budget recommendation for county commissioners by Nov. 16.
Working from an Aug. 19 draft budget, Finance Director Jenny Windsor said the wage line, initially projected to increase 30 percent from the prior year, is now expected to total $243,059, down from $272,200. She also said the department could reduce its request for full-time overtime wages from $2,500 to $1,000.
Those savings would be partly offset by a $13,000 increase in professional services for consultants and financial experts.
Audit services, budgeted at $110,000, are also expected to cost more. Windsor said $125,000 is a more realistic estimate.
Asked for more detail about the increase, Windsor said it includes fees for a consultant who prepares the county’s financial statements for the auditor. No one in the finance department now does that work, a point of friction between Windsor and some committee members.
Windsor said the county previously relied on the auditor “to actually come up with the numbers and then review them” as part of the audit process. A consultant now does that work.
Windsor said the finance department may eventually prepare the financial statements in-house, but it is still catching up on audits and updating accounting procedures and does not have time to take on the work now.
“We’re just uncovering there are entries that need to be made, bank reconciliations that need to be done. It’s a huge cleanup,” she said, which is “not what you want to hear.”
State Rep. Tiffany Strout, a committee member and Republican from Harrington, asked Windsor for clarification on the bank reconciliations and whether the department has a system to keep track of monthly balances.
Committee member Martha Howell, a Lubec selectperson, added, “If you haven’t reconciled it, if you get your bank statement every month and you haven’t reconciled it in the last four years, you have no idea what’s been happening in it.”
Committee Chairman Brian Schuth said the lack of up-to-date account reconciliations meant “we do not have the level of certainty one would expect under normal circumstances,” but acknowledged that the county’s circumstances are not normal.
Windsor said she knows staff members should reconcile accounts monthly, but the audits are so outdated that “they can’t figure it out.”
The county’s financial consultant has suggested ways for the department to begin the reconciliations, she said, and staff members could start in January 2027.
“This is a concern. It’s a big concern,” Strout said. “It’s a cost if we’re paying employees and consultants and auditors. Like there at some point needs to be somebody doing the job (in-house) so we’re not paying extra for all the other stuff.”
Committee Vice Chairman Ben Edwards asked members to “remember that a lot of these outside costs are because we were in such a bad position last year.”
Strout said she understood but “I don’t want to continue down the same path.”
Committee member Crystal Gallina, who is also the finance director in Calais, defended Windsor’s position.
“I’m listening to this,” she said, “and from somebody who works in a similar kind of office, I can tell you that whatever happened to get to this mess at this point, these people are trying to catch up, and so they’re prioritizing.”
Gallina said reconciling bank statements is not a high priority because “they don’t have the same deadline that responding to the auditor has, that responding to a banker has, that responding to a financial consultant has.”
Reconciling the county’s bank statements is “not just sitting down and checking some boxes and it taking an hour,” Gallina said. “We’re talking about weeks to do this, and that’s just to get caught up.”
Gallina offered to come in on weekends to help the finance staff, and Windsor thanked her for the support.
Schuth said he did not think the lack of reconciliation “cripples our ability to do our job, but it certainly introduces a certain amount of uncertainty into the discussion we’re having.”
He said the tension was “a little bit like I’m watching the crew of the Titanic fight over who gets to steer the ship after it’s hit the ice,” and he urged people to be patient with staff members as they work to correct the county’s finance and accounting practices.
County Manager Renée Gray said access to bank reconciliations last year was “the one piece that I was missing that would have alerted me to an issue a lot sooner had I had access to that information.”
Gray said she raised the issue because the lack of current balances was “cited as a major finding in all of the audits. Not just the county audits. It’s in the unorganized territories audits.”
Gray said she has asked the finance department to provide monthly bank documents, noting that problems “could have been caught had I been able to have access to those printed documents monthly from the bank.”
In presenting her spending requests for county administration, which includes the county commissioners, Gray noted higher-than-expected costs for professional services, including lawyers and possibly a human resources consultant.
Other increases include mileage for the commissioners and manager, wages and costs for the ongoing newspaper archive project.
In all, the county administration requests represent a 21.63 percent increase over the previous year, or $59,538.
Buildings and Grounds Supervisor Matt Drennen told the committee that the department’s electricity budget is projected to be $105,000 higher year over year because electricity budget lines for the jail and Regional Communications Center have been moved to buildings and grounds. His request includes $6,000 for equipment and furniture and also includes equipment repair and maintenance.
When asked about the 68.54 percent increase in fuel costs for county buildings, Drennen said it reflects the commission’s decision not to contract for fuel, but instead to pay rack prices and wait for prices to drop. In September, Windsor recommended that the commission reject two oil bids.
“If we award a bid and the price drops, we’re locked in,” she said at the time, which could mean a $40,000 difference in spending.
The Buildings and Grounds Department’s budget request is 16.62 percent higher than last year, an increase of $90,386.
Darlene Perry, the register of probate, presented a budget request that includes $24,253 for part-time wages, covering up to 20 hours per week. The department processes wills and estates, among other things. Staff members have also been urged to begin performing weddings, which could create a new revenue stream.
Perry said lawyers regularly complain about how slowly the department is processing cases. She said the clerks are working as fast as they can but need help “in order to, you know, continue with helping people file and answering the phones and the emails and the people at the door and being in the hearings and all of those things.”
Gray said she has also received complaints and knows the probate staff is overworked.
Perry also requested $1,000 for computer upgrades. The department’s budget request is up 8.98 percent, or $21,659, from last year.
Registrar of Deeds Tammy Gay’s budget request is up 4.58 percent, or $10,659, from last year, with increases for wages, internet expenses, postage and office supplies.
Department heads have requested a total of $17.1 million, nearly 30 percent more than current spending, an increase of $3.7 million.
The Budget Advisory Committee’s next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 6.
