Village of Greenwich - Water and Sewer Financial Operations (2019M-229)

Issued Date
April 17, 2020

[read complete report - pdf]

Audit Objective

Determine whether Village officials effectively managed the billing, collecting, enforcing and accounting for water and sewer charges.

Key Findings

  • The Village lacked effective procedures to ensure water and sewer charges were accurately billed, collected and enforced.
  • Board-adopted water rates were incorrectly setup in the billing and collection software.
  • Customer bills were not accurately prepared. As a result, the customers we reviewed were underbilled by $4,758 and overbilled by $235.
  • Delinquent customer accounts were not always assessed penalties in accordance with the Board-adopted local laws. As a result, for the delinquent customer accounts we reviewed the Village lost revenue totaling $3,244.

Key Recommendations

  • Establish written policies and procedures to provide adequate guidance for the billing, collecting and enforcing of water and sewer charges.
  • Ensure Board-adopted water rates are correctly setup in the billing and collection software.
  • Generate billing registers for each water and sewer billing and provide them to the Board for review.
  • Ensure penalties are correctly assessed on all delinquent accounts in accordance with the Board-adopted local laws.

Village officials generally agreed with our recommendations and have initiated, or indicated they planned to initiate corrective action.