By Rodd Cayton
The Town of Edgewood is righting its fiscal ship, according to Town Manager Kelly Hamilton, with finance manager Amber Sanchez at the helm. She’s turning the Titanic away from the iceberg,” Hamilton told the Route 66 Independent. “She’s working diligently on getting us a clean set of books, so we have a financial record that is accurate.”
The town is working toward resolving a trio of financial problems discussed at recent meetings, he said. Hamilton said Edgewood is in the process of switching its banking relationship with Wells Fargo; he said that the original town leaders opened a business account, which will be replaced with a government account once it has its audits up to date. The government account, he said, offers better options for the town’s credit cards. That’s an issue, because of the recent discovery of several credit cards in the names of long-departed town employees.
Hamilton said an audit preparation firm, RedW LLC, is working on the fiscal 2024 document, which will be soon reviewed by Pattillo Brown & Hill LLP, a certified public accounting firm. He said Sanchez’s work has unearthed a lot of financial practices under prior administration that were not applied correctly.
The Mid-Region Council of Governments, he said, has found a consultant that should help the town sort out its wastewater billing. At their June 23 meeting, executive assistant Tina Montano told town commissioners that the town has missed out on more than $200,000 in revenue over the last couple of years, due to 17 properties hooked up to the town’s sewer system not being billed for those services. Hamilton said the town is considering hiring a wastewater operator trainee to help the current operator with that department’s responsibilities.
A third situation discussed with the Town Commission was Hamilton’s need to provide his personal credit card to buy fuel for police cars, after the cards officers had been using were suspended over a weekend. Hamilton said the spending limit on those cards hadn’t been updated to reflect the increase in fuel prices since they were issued. “It was substantially cheaper two or three years back,” he said, adding that the limit has since been increased.
Hamilton said his goal is to implement standard operating procedures that increase the reliability of the town’s financial reporting. “We want to make sure it works and is still working long after we are gone.”