"I’m frankly, personally worried that we’ll never see them."
~ Superintendent Paul Stein, referring to the missing credit card records from the METCO DirectorThe latest news...
Split decision from AG on BOS OML violation
AG finds only violation was that agenda should have been more specific, but found no evidence of collusion, and therefore no violation regarding the manner in which the BOS terminated the Town Administrator. Read All About It!Still Awaiting Missing Records from Wayland
METCO Director
A recent letter, addressed to Barbara Fletcher, Chairperson, Wayland School Committee, from James E. Powers, CPA and Partner of Powers & Sullivan, LLC, revealed:
“There is a possibility that a direct personal benefit could have occurred.”
“Without any supporting documentation we are left with the undisputed fact that METCO funds were used to directly pay off a personal credit card.”
“The METCO Director used the discretionary funds to directly pay down her personal credit card account 25 times for a total of $20,440.”*
“As with all of these discretionary accounts, there was no oversight by School management which increased the possibility of misappropriation of funds.”
“Any reasonable person would question the appropriateness of these payments and realize that there is a serious breach of internal control. The $20,000 amount is considered significant.”
“As stated in our original report that unlike the school discretionary accounts, METCO had $18,000 of checks made out to cash and ATM withdrawals. We consider checks made out to cash or ATM withdrawals to be a material weakness in internal control which increases the possibility of misappropriation of funds.”
*Based on the Powers & Sullivan review of 5 out of the 13 years of the Wayland METCO Director's employment.
Stay tuned… updates to follow…
Selectman Doug Leard Steps Down
"As residents, elected officials and appointed members of boards and committees it is collectively our responsibility to set an example and to ‘build trust’ in our community I look forward to Wayland’s future accomplishments."
Doug Leard, Selectman, upon announcing his resignation ~ October 30 Wayland Town Crier
Kudos to Wayland Elementary Schools Task Force
They did a very comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of our elementary schools configuration. They researched many options, which they narrowed down to the three that were presented. The parents and the town are the beneficiaries of their hard work.
If you missed their presentation, you can find the gist of it here. If you are relatively new to town and wondering why Loker School was closed at all, you can find the background here. The 4 links on that page enable you to learn as much or as little as you like, ranging from a brief "elevator version" to all the gory details.
Another Isolated Incident in Wayland's Schools
Wayland School employee fired for hacking the Town’s financial software system.
Here's the story in the Wayland Town Crier. Here's the actual Fraud Examination Report.
Just The Facts
The Truth About Wayland Town Administrator's Termination
There is a lot of misleading information floating around about the termination of Wayland's Town Administrator, much of it emotionally charged, but inaccurate. This page is devoted to Just The Facts.
FACT: BOS Chair Doug Leard DID reply to Steve Correia's questions about the agenda item before the meeting. The fact that Mr. Correia didn't like the answer ("I don't know, talk to Tony") does not change that fact.
FACT: The residents attending the meeting that night had no prior knowledge of what was about to happen. Reports to the contrary are utterly false. The truth is that having an item on the agenda that concerned the Town Administrator would obviously bring out residents who had strong feelings about our TA.
FACT: There is no indication that this termination is going to cost us lots of money. It may actually save us money. All we know right now is that we will be paying the $152,500 severance, as some like to say, "for Fred to stay home", which we would have paid anyway. What we don't know yet is when we'll need to resume paying a new TA and how much, i.e. it doesn't need to be the same salary we were paying.
Take a deep breath and read some perspective on the termination of the
Wayland Town Administrator.
If you'd asked us an hour ago, we'd have said it's going to be hard to top the Wayland Town Administrator story for news events this week, but.......
The Wayland Schools Audit draft has just been released and it ain't pretty.
Here are a few excerpts:"There were 4 charges to the debit card to the Cheesecake Factory for gift certificates before the Christmas break and end of the school year that total $1,165."
"The review of this account identified many checks made out to cash, ATM withdrawals of cash and many questionable transactions without any supporting documents."
"There were 25 payments totaling $20,440 from July 2006 through January 2010 made directly to pay down the Director’s personal credit cards...... She stated that she threw out all of her old credit card statements and had requested copies of the statements after our discussion. As of the date of this report we have not been provided the statements." The full report can be found here.
Wastewater Lawsuit - So, Where Do We Go From Here?
We have arrived at the August 2 deadline that the Town of Wayland has for filing any responses to the court regarding the outcome of the Twenty Wayland wastewater lawsuit.. Stay tuned for more info on that.
In the meantime, we have just posted an easy to read chronology that helps us understand how we got here.
In addition to the significant developments below in the Wastewater Lawsuit, posted earlier, we have now posted Fred Turkington’s Deposition on the Wastewater page.
As previously reported in the Wayland Town Crier,
the Town of Wayland lost by a vote of 14-0 and was ordered by the court to pay $989,744 in damages to the developers, Twenty Wayland LLC.
But now, there is more. Click here to learn more and to read the actual court documents.
It is difficult to estimate the cost of Wayland providing specific performance per the 1999 MOA as ordered by the court. If that includes constructing a new groundwater discharge facility at the town building ball field, with piping to and from the wastewater plant, that could easily add a million dollars or more to the already $1,2000,000 awarded to Twenty Wayland.