Saugus Landfill Account audit ‘in the home stretch’

SAUGUS – It took three tries to approve it and it’s been six months since its launch, but the audit of the town’s Landfill Account is still not complete.Town Manager Andrew Bisignani said Tuesday he wasn’t sure when the audit would be complete, but he believes “it’s in the home stretch.”He also said while he couldn’t speak for the auditors, he didn’t anticipate there would be any impropriety discerned from the audit.”It appears it’s all a lack of communication,” he said.Town Moderator Robert Long said he would agree with Bisignani’s assessment.Selectman Stephen Horlick raised the issue of auditing the account last year when he discovered there was only $185,000 left in an account that was supposed to carry enough to monitor the landfill for 30 years.When closure procedures for the Main Street landfill began in 2002, then-Town Manager Stephen Angelo recommended using 450,000 cubic yards of Big Dig fill. After going back and forth on the amount of fill to be taken in, the 450,000 cubic yards was accepted and netted the town $675,000 for post-closure monitoring.Long, however, pointed out that there were a number of issues that clouded the final outcome and changed the final numbers. First, he noted that not only did Angelo depart before the deal was even signed, but Clerk of the Works Kevin Nigro also left the project before it was finished.Town Meeting approved the account that would manage the incoming money as an enterprise account, which meant it would have to appropriate money for the account each year.When Bisignani came on board, he treated the account as a revolving account for nearly three years until someone finally pointed out that was wrong. Long said the problem is Town Meeting need not appropriate money for a revolving account.”So millions of dollars came in and were spent in the meantime,” he said, adding he doesn’t believe it was done inappropriately, but there is not as much of a paper trail as he would like.”It was miscommunication absolutely,” Long said. “Which inevitably leads to mistrust, not just in Saugus but anywhere.”There was a lawsuit surrounding the closure that ate up roughly $146,000 and Long pointed out that legal costs on the whole were greater than anticipated.At one point, the Department of Environmental Protection also stepped in and told the town it would have to clean up a large patch of ground at the base of the landfill. The spot included the Department of Public Works driveway and salt shed, which cost nearly $400,000 to clean up.”If we were to do it again there are things we would change along the way,” Long said.Horlick said he expected the audit to wrap up within a couple of weeks and looked forward to the report, though he wondered if he would know anything more than when he started.He said when the audit first started auditors had trouble pulling information together because some of the information had disappeared. He said he didn’t believe it was nefarious, it was simply gone and because of that, “in the end we won’t know, might not know any more than when we started.”