New York (WWNY) – The town of Watertown continues to work on its <a href="https://bitcomme.com/nebius-reports-second-quarter-2026-<a href="https://bitcomme.com/globant-reports-2026-second-quarter-financial-results/” title=”Globant Reports 2026 Second Quarter Financial Results”>financial-results/” title=”Nebius reports second quarter 2026 financial results”>financial issues, as the state takes a deeper look into the town’s books
Jim Wright was appointed Watertown town supervisor in June: his goal was to fix the finances. He replaced longtime supervisor Joel Bartlett, who resigned from the board.
“That was the issue that needed to be addressed,” Wright said Thursday.
That work continued Thursday night, addressing a new system for the town’s sewer and water districts.
They require a lot of activity in terms of accounting, financing, managing those twelve different districts, and all those separate funds, fees, etc.,” Wright said.
What has been a manual process will soon be streamlined into an automated system
“It will provide for fund accounting so that each one of the respective water and sewer funds will be accounted for. Fees and revenues accounted for. So it’s going to be a different system of accounting. It won’t be one fiscal year to fix it. It’s going to take a couple, and we’re going to have to work our way through it,” Wright said.
The efforts come as the State Comptroller’s Office performs an audit on the town’s books from last year and a portion of this year’s, requested by Board Member Joanne McCluskey.
“If you looked at prior board meetings there were employees in attendance complaining about payroll issues. Vendors complaining about payments, a number of issues that were starting to rise to the surface because of the town’s approach,” Wright said.
He saidthe next item on the list: starting the budget process next month.
“Hopefully we can get some of these pieces together so we can have a planned budget process and have a little bit better predictability on where we’re going.”
Wright will serve on the board through the end of the year, but he doesn’t anticipate the audit will be finished by then
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