CORRECTIVE ACTION PLAN
Oversight Agency for Audit: U.S. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
The City of Haverhill, Massachusetts respectfully submits the following corrective action plan for the year ended June 30, 2023.
Name and address of independent public accounting firm:
Powers & Sullivan, LLC
100 Quannapowitt Parkway, Suite 101
Wakefield, MA 01880
Audit period: July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2023
The finding from the June 30, 2023, schedule of findings and questioned costs is discussed below. The finding is numbered consistently with the number assigned in the schedule.
FINDINGS—FEDERAL AWARD PROGRAMS AUDITS
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY
COVID-19 - Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds
Federal Assistance Listing Number 21.027
2023-002: Reporting to the Federal Government
Compliance Requirement: Reporting
Type of Finding: Compliance and Internal Control over Compliance – Other Matter
Criteria or Specific Requirement: Grantees must comply with reporting requirements established by the U.S. Treasury that includes reporting the total grant expenditures incurred for the reporting period. Since the City is a Metropolitan City with a population below 250,000 residents that was allocated more than $10.0 million in funding, the City is required to submit, to the U.S. Department of Treasury, a project and expenditure report 30 days after the end of each quarter.
Condition: The City submitted the appropriate quarterly report timely, however the report submitted through June 30, 2023, did not reconcile into the City’s accounting ledgers by approximately $787,000.
Questioned Costs: None Reported.
Context: The City filed the required project and expenditure report in a timely manner, however the report submitted to the U.S. Treasury’s Portal was $787,000 less than the expenditures reported to the City’s accounting ledgers. A large majority of the missing expenditures related to year end warrants processed. In compiling the information for reporting purposes, the City did not extract the expenditure information correctly from the general ledger and omitted some of the City’s year end warrants.
Effect: The expenditures reported on the City’s project and expenditure report did not match the accounting records.
Cause: The City did not set the report parameters in the City’s accounting software to generate all 2023 expenditures incurred.
Recommendation: Management should correct the report in the next reporting submission.
Views of Responsible Officials and Planned Corrective Actions: Management made a good faith effort to correctly report its expenditures to the U.S. Treasury Department on an accurate and timely basis. The accounting ledgers require specific parameters to be set when the underlying data to compile the reports is generated. There was a clerical error in running these reports, and Management expects to correct this on the subsequent period’s reporting in fiscal 2024.
If the Oversight Agency has questions regarding this plan, please call Angel Perkins, Chief Financial Officer & City Auditor at (978)-374-2306.