Two committees of Ansonia Aldermen discussed how to respond to allegations of wrongdoing in its tax collector’s office for more than an hour during a joint meeting at City Hall Thursday night.
But citing a need for more concrete information and advice from experts on just what to do in response, they put off any action to another special meeting in two weeks.
Meanwhile, Mayor James Della Volpe announced he hopes to soon hire an interim replacement for the city’s former tax collector, Bridget Bostic, who resigned last Tuesday.
The mayor said he’s in negotiations with a retired tax collector from Fairfield who is a past president of the Connecticut Tax Collectors Association with 19 years experience.
He didn’t name the candidate, but according to this CT Post article, in March a man named Stanley Gorzelany retired from the post of tax collector in Fairfield after 19 years there.
“He might be willing to come in and overlook our situation,” Della Volpe told members of the Board of Aldermen’s finance and salary/personnel committees.
After the meeting the mayor said the potential temporary tax collector would work on a month-to-month basis and help implement any changes put in place, in addition to leading a search for a permanent replacement.
Just what the city would be looking for in a permanent replacement — and what such a person would be tasked to do in the wake of Bostic’s departure — remains an open question.
Bostic resigned six weeks after the Valley Independent Sentinel published a story revealing she had improperly given car tax “release” documents to people who had not paid their car taxes.
The documents stated that the residents had paid their car taxes, which allowed them to renew their vehicle registrations when, in fact, they owed money.
The Valley Indy showed that Bostic gave releases to her mother and to three people who either worked for the city or volunteered on a city board or commission.
The four people owed $16,666 in back car taxes as of June 28.
On Thursday, Aldermen had invited an official from the Connecticut Tax Collectors Association to the meeting to discuss possible responses to the problems, but that person was not there.
Representatives of the accounting firm that audits the city’s finances, Michaud and Accavallo, CPAs, LLC, did attend the meeting, and told Aldermen how the process works.
John Accavallo, one of the firm’s partners, said audits of the tax office represent a random sampling, not an exhaustive check of every payment.
They look at certain transaction, usually from “heavier periods” of during the summer and winter when more payments come in, to make sure they’re accounted for properly.
But Accavallo said allegations like those that have surfaced — where a tax clearance form was issued despite people owing money — are more difficult to find.
“Unless we actually see it being done or hear from another party that it’s being done … There’s no way to test what we’d call ‘management override’ in a situation like this,” he said.
An exhaustive, forensic audit would cost the city about $20,000 to $25,000 for each year of records it would ask auditors to sift through, he said later.
And though auditors’ tests aren’t designed to check procedures regarding DMV clearances, he said they could be easily tracked in the future by being numbered and logged.
Ultimately, though, Thursday’s meeting brought Aldermen no closer to answers to some of their main questions, like how many tax clearances were issued improperly, or for that matter, how many were issued at all?
For more help toward that goal, they scheduled another special meeting for Sept. 20, at which time they hope to meet with an official from the Connecticut Tax Collector’s Association, a forensic auditor, and the temporary tax collector, if there is one.
Rich Bshara, from the city’s comptroller’s office, said during the meeting that he’ll also work on compiling reports on those who have owed the city back taxes in early July — just before the Valley Indy’s story on the issue ran — with a view to cross-referencing them against a list of registered motor vehicles the DMV provides to the city every year.
Aldermen Thursday also talked about revisions to the job description the city will post looking for a permanent replacement.
They looked over advertisements for jobs in other tax collector’s offices but put off any action on that the issue until the Sept. 20 meeting as well.
