Finding Text
The Town applied for approximately $6.4 million in a California Water and Wastewater Arrearages Payment Program Grant (Grant) from the State Water Resources Control Board, which was received in May 2022. The funding source for this Grant is the American Rescue Plan Act. The Grant Guidelines state that wastewater treatment providers and billing entities that accrued residential and commercial customer arrearages during the COVID-19 pandemic bill relief period (March 4, 2020 through June 15, 2021) are eligible for funding under the Grant. The Guidelines also state that wastewater treatment providers and wastewater billing entities must provide documentation from accounting or billing systems verifying the reported arrearages as part of the application. The authorized representative, or its designee, must attest to the accuracy of the application material and the reported arrearages based on the wastewater treatment provider's or wastewater billing entity's documentation or the methodology used by the State Water Board if supporting documentation is unavailable.
In summary, the purpose of the Grant was to help local governments that had incurred losses due to customers who were delinquent on paying water and sewer fees during the above period. Once the Grant was received, local governments were to credit the customer accounts within 60 days, using the Grant funds. In addition, the Grant required local governments to remit all unused moneys back to the State Water Resources Control Board within 6 months of receiving the funds. After reviewing the Grant Guidelines, we noted during our audit that the amount requested by the Town represented approximately one year’s worth of revenue in the Sewer Fund. Since the period mentioned above only covered about 15 months, and the amount claimed appeared excessive, we questioned the Town’s Finance staff about it. The Town’s Finance staff researched the situation, and it became apparent the amount received was significantly in excess of the amount that should have been claimed based on the Grant requirements. However, based on our discussions and the Town’s research, during the 2022-23 fiscal year, a substantial portion of the $6.4 million grant was credited to ineligible customer accounts (no arrearages during the above period), and the Town didn’t collect the Sewer fees they normally would have.
Therefore, approximately $6.2 million of the grant received is reported as Due to Other Governments in the Sewer Fund and $187,494 in the General Fund as of June 30, 2022.