HANOVER — Auditor Bruce Norling reported to the South Shore Regional School Committee on Wednesday, April 17 that South Shore Tech had a “good year” in fiscal 2019.
The district received a report with no adverse findings, and he reported that the school has “very adequate financial controls.”
“You’re pretty much on budget,” he said. “The overall bottom line is on budget. Your revenues were a little higher than you expected, but your expenses were a bit higher than you budgeted. It all came out pretty close.”
Norling said the school did a good job managing to stay within its budget.
“I also think, at year end, reserving money … for future projects,” he said. “I think that’s another way of how you manage to also keep the state happy that you’re not retaining too much dollars [in excess and deficiency].”
Norling said the only “black cloud” was the other post-employment benefits (OPEB) and pension obligations, which are also a concern for many government agencies.
“It’s a very large liability that doesn’t affect your budget so much now, but maybe in 20 years it will [have an effect] if you can’t fund that,” Norling said.
School Committee member Robert Molla of Norwell asked if revolving accounts from shops that deal with the public, such as culinary — through the Brass Lantern Restaurant — and the cosmetology shops, are being used effectively and not “hoarded.”
Norling said he found no problems with the revolving funds or enterprise accounts.
“I don’t see any abuses there,” he said. “I didn’t see any hoarding or excessive amounts of keeping profits.”
District Treasurer James Coughlin said the state requires those accounts to be audited every three years, which was done last year. He also said the district is not using excess and deficiency to balance budgetary costs.