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treasurer

    ADDING UP

    Wellfleet Chooses a New Town Treasurer

    Cameron Reiss Scott says he is a ‘numbers person’

    By

    WELLFLEET — Cameron Reiss Scott, the former head account clerk at Barnstable Superior Court, now has a longer commute to work from his home in Centerville, where he lives with his boyfriend and his goldendoodle. He started his job as Wellfleet’s treasurer on March 7.

    He told the Independent shortly after being named to the position that he was “looking forward to learning everything I can and establishing a team” with his new colleagues.

    Scott managed fiscal operations at the court for eight years. Now he is digging into the complexities of Wellfleet’s accounting. The treasurer is responsible for local revenue collections, cash management, payroll, investment of funds, management of debt service, and other municipal finance functions, according to the job posting on the Mass. Municipal Association website.

    Scott replaces former Town Treasurer Miriam Spencer, who resigned on Nov. 30, 2021. At the time, Spencer cited high turnover of department staff and a lack of guidance as her reasons for leaving.

    Moving Forward

    While Scott doesn’t know all the details, he has some idea of the well-documented troubles awaiting him in town hall. “I know what’s out there, but it didn’t deter me,” he said. “There’s still a positive outlook on the town’s future.”

    Wellfleet town accounts have been a mess for years, though the problems became public only in the fall of 2020 when former Town Administrator Maria Broadbent fired Town Accountant Gene Ferrari. A few months later, a newly hired town accountant, Heather Michaud, discovered alarming discrepancies in the town’s books and asked that the fiscal 2020 audit include a management letter listing specific accounting irregularities.

    Wellfleet’s new treasurer, Cameron Reiss Scott, outside town hall. (Photo by Michaela Chesin)

    The town’s longtime auditors at Powers & Sullivan then identified material weaknesses in cash management and internal controls and a $765,000 “unknown variance” in the books (there was no balance sheet or general ledger) that remains unresolved.

    Broadbent resigned in April 2021 following an emergency meeting with the select board. Michaud also announced her resignation that week.

    Scott told the Independent he has the experience to move the town forward and solve problems as they come up. Cash reconciliations were a big part of his job at the trial court, he said, and will be part of his job here.

    “That’s probably the task that took the most time,” Scott said. He will also be partially responsible for updating the general ledger, which he said he has experience with already.

    Many town officials pointed to Wellfleet’s transition to the VADAR accounting system in 2019 as a major contributor to the financial crisis. While Scott has minimal experience with the software, “I’m already working with the company and being trained,” he said. He’s started making transactions in that program.

    “Software comes to me pretty naturally, so I’m not concerned about that,” he said.

    Software transitions require attention to detail and were sometimes problematic during his time at the courthouse, he said.

    “You have to check everything and make the necessary corrections,” he said.

    Scott didn’t plan to go into municipal finance. His first job at age 15 was interning at a law firm in San Francisco, near where he grew up. “I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but that’s not where my heart was,” he said.

    Scott moved across the country to attend Brown University, graduating in 2007 with a B.A. in business economics. He was a paralegal before switching to the finance side of the legal field.

    “I have always been more of a numbers person,” he said. “When I was in Barnstable Superior Court, there was really nowhere else for me to go unless I moved to Boston again. That’s where the high-level finance jobs are. That’s what really got me to change my career path from a trial court to municipal government. I knew I had to look for an opportunity that I could grow into and grow from.”

    He is finishing up a master’s in public administration at Suffolk University. Classes are Saturdays at Barnstable Town Hall.

    Despite being from the West Coast, Scott said he has always been drawn to the Cape.

    “Both sides of my family have been coming to Cape Cod for generations,” he said. His parents met working at the now-shuttered Fleming’s Restaurant in Chatham.

    “Cape Cod always felt like home,” he said. “I even rooted for the Boston sports teams and not San Francisco teams growing up.”

    FINANCE DEPT.

    Wellfleet Town Treasurer Miriam Spencer Resigns

    Another resignation means more delay in closing the town’s books

    By

    WELLFLEET — After serving as town treasurer for almost three years, Miriam Spencer submitted her resignation on Monday, Nov. 15.

    “It’s been a long time coming,” she told the Independent. “The turnover has made it so unstable. We don’t have a full complement of people we can rely on long-term.” Her last day was Wednesday, Dec. 1.

    Spencer’s resignation adds to a long list of other resignations among town staff in the last few years, particularly those responsible for the town’s finances. Since she started in 2019, Spencer has worked with more than half a dozen town accountants and town administrators. These important staff positions have been held by people who often stayed no longer than a few months, she said.

    In addition to the high turnover, the continuing accounting dept. problems have meant that new issues frequently emerge. Among the biggest unsolved mysteries are the “unknown variance” of $765,000 that was reported by the town’s auditors and the town’s inability to close its books for fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2021. That has meant that the free cash account has not been certified by the state for those years.

    The treasurer is responsible for managing the town’s payroll; paying bills outside payroll; debt management, including short-term borrowing and bonding; and administering benefits, including insurance, retirement plans, and the ins and outs of Medicare, Spencer said.

    Interim Town Administrator Charlie Sumner informed the select board of Spencer’s resignation on Nov. 23. “It’s unfortunate,” he told the Independent. “It does throw a wrench into some of our plans, but we have to deal with that. She has a right to decide her own future. She has decided to resign and we respect that.”

    The resignation will again push back the closing the books for 2020 and 2021, as interim Town Accountant Mary McIsaac will have to reallocate some of her time to the treasurer role while they recruit someone to take on the position, Sumner said.

    Spencer became town treasurer after the previous treasurer, Rosemary Moriarty, retired in 2019. She had been the assistant town treasurer since 2015 and felt up to the challenge, she said, especially given that she was told she would get training and support. Her background includes being a math teacher.

    That support, promised by former Town Administrator Dan Hoort, never came, Spencer said. “I was just trying to keep the wheels turning: keep the bills paid and people paid,” she said.

    New leaders came with different expectations of how things should be done. “Someone new would derail what the last person did,” she said.

    “We haven’t had solid leadership in a long time,” Spencer said. “We developed strategies for doing our work that may have blurred the lines between the treasurer’s and accountant’s offices.” She said she had to rely on the town accountant for data that often turned out to be wrong or unreliable. “The quality of my work is only as good as the data I get from the accounting office,” she said. “If you can’t count on that data, you’re constantly questioning.”

    Spencer’s resignation letter singled out Hoort along with Marcia Bohink, Rich Bienvenue, Heather Michaud, “and even Mary McIsaac” as having promised guidance but not followed through. She also placed blame on the select board, writing, “High staff turnover in the accounting department and elsewhere, and inaction on the part of the select board and administrations past on critical staffing issues have left a legacy of dysfunction.”

    She concluded by warning that “without long-term leadership in this area from a full-time town accountant and/or finance director, things will continue to unravel.”

    “If Connie [Boulos] or Heather [Michaud] had stayed, I would have had a partner to work with,” Spencer told the Independent. Boulos was the town accountant for two years but left in 2019. Her job was taken by Gene Ferrari, who was fired a year later by then Town Administrator Maria Broadbent. Michaud came on in 2021, but stayed for only three months, resigning on April 23, the same day as Broadbent.

    While Spencer credited Sumner and the interim accountants from Brewster with being competent, “They are going to leave,” she pointed out. “The only thing that’s going to make it work is that we have people paying attention.”

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