ROCKLAND – The Rockland City Council received its financial audit for 2016 in a special meeting at city hall, April 19. The accounting firm of James Wadman, CPA, of Ellsworth, compiled the information for the city and he presented those findings to council members. Councilors Valli Geiger, Ed Glaser and Adam Ackor were present. Rockland Mayor Will Clayton was unable to attend the meeting.

Wadman said the city has definitely showed improvement for the year.

"They have improved their accounting records," he said. "Still some room for improvement and we'll be looking for continued improvement this coming year, but overall it was a good year."

Wadman has been doing the city's financial audits for 15 years. One area of improvements for the city was in a category called, "findings." Wadman explained what a finding was.

"It could be a weakness in internal control, maybe where better accountability needs to be kept on certain areas, or you may not be following state laws or staying within your budget that's been adopted by the city, things of that nature."

In 2015, Rockland had six findings. In 2016, there were three.

Wadman said Rockland had a lot of old debt on its books. Money owed to the city that was not going to be collected and needed to be addressed.

Specifically there are a large block of receivables for the transfer station and EMS fund.

Tom Luttrell, Rockland's Finance Director, said the balances need to be written off.

"These balances are basically due to companies that went out of business," he said "They went out of business and left money on the books," he said. "With EMS, Camden First Aid went belly up years ago and we're still carrying all those balances that were never collected."

If the bills are not collected it requires an act of council to write them off.

Councilor Valli Geiger, acting as interim mayor in Clayton's absence, said overall the audit was good news.

"Three as opposed to six incorrect ways of managing the city is good news," she said. "We had a surplus, which suggests that our population is doing better. We had a large surplus in excise tax, which means people were buying cars."

Property tax collections were better than usual.

"I'll be interested to see because this year we're receiving more requests for tax waivers for people who are struggling," Geiger said. "I don't know if that means the city is dividing and we have more people who are doing well and an increased number of people doing badly. I don't know yet, but we are getting more requests for help than in previous years."

The audit compared Rockland to other towns such as Hampden, Bar Harbor and Castine. Geiger said she was not happy with the comparisons.

"They're all little towns," she said. "They are not useful to me. I want to know about towns that are more like us, people who have courthouses and lots of infrastructure compared to the population, people who are trying to manage a large infrastructure with decreased revenue sharing."

Geiger said she was interested in the small amount of state help, especially in funding education.

"We're supposed to be funded at 55 percent," she said. "The state is actually using a formula of 42 percent, but Rockland is getting about 18 percent of its money from the state. That means that our little population is funding a huge school system. A school system were 90 percent the kids in elementary school are on reduced lunch."

Overdrafts and unbudgeted expenditures were another negative the city was called on. Geiger said it was because money got spent before it was approved.

"Money got spent, but we knew it was coming," she said. "For example, when we were doing that TIF for the museum, they had budget deadlines in terms of the grants. We knew we were going to be spending it, but it didn't follow the right line. And they were right. They have a right to be worried. It was great that they called us on that and we need to do better where we can."

Geiger answered the question of, ‘is Rockland in good shape?’

"Are we in shape? We were putting aside 6.7 percent and auditors recommend 10 to 12 percent. And we are never putting away anywhere near that, so we have a small reserve if disaster hits. That bothers me. Two years ago, I was new and we decided to keep our tax increase to zero by taking more out of the reserves. It turns out we didn't have to, but it's just not a good idea."

Geiger said the city should be living within its means or protest vigorously with the Maine Municipal Association and the state to give the city the funding it's supposed to have.

The Finance Department for Rockland is responsible for insuring the financial integrity of the city's operations. The department provides prompt and cost effective administration of debt, maintains account records and prepares financial statements and other reports of the financial condition of the city.