Petropoulos Battles With Board Over Reports Detailing Budget Spending [with video]

Despite Town Accountant Patricia Dufresne and Town Manager Mark Haddad providing monthly reports detailing spending based on budget line items voted at Town Meeting, Selectman Jack Petropoulos insisted that he also wants to have a quarterly report that summarizes budget spending. Haddad and Dufresne explained a monthly report is submitted to Selectmen and Finance Committee with all the spending details.

"Every line is there, every one of the line items voted at town meeting," Dufresne said. Haddad tried to explain that municipal government operates differently from private companies, stressing that reports by line item give good detail while quarterly summaries will not provide nearly the level of information and that they often provoke requests for more detail which is contained in the monthly report. "We already do the monthly report with a percentage spent for each line item." He cautioned that a percentage can skew how the spending is occurring and used as an example the line item in the DPW budget for paving materials. Those are ordered and paid for at a certain time of year, and may show 100 percent of that line item spent in one or two months.

Nevertheless, Petropoulos insisted that he wanted a "periodic report". Selectman Stuart Schulman commented, "This is getting quite silly. The document with all the information is available." Petropoulos continued, "It's not at an executive level."

Selectmen Chairman Peter Cunningham replied, "That's not accurate Jack. The line items dig deeper for detail on the original appropriation and how much is left...You are asking for busy work." Schulman added that this is summary level versus detailed numbers. "I don't want to see extra work being put on the town accountant. Someone can look at one line item and see the detail."

Petropoulos said he picked this recommendation out of the list of suggestions contained in the report from the Division of Local Services, who reviewed the significant progress made by the town since their initial report and recommendations in 2004.