MIDDLEBOROUGH — At the start of 2022, the two offices that keep Middleborough’s books were run by people who had held their jobs for more than a decade.

Since then, both offices have changed hands, one of them more than once. The town folded its accounting office into a new Finance Department, and now plans to undo that change. The treasurer/collector’s office is about to change hands again.

Over the same stretch, Middleborough switched accounting software and found itself facing a budget shortfall of more than $3.3 million. It is still waiting on the audit of the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2025, and its auditors have warned that the report will identify material weaknesses in the town’s internal controls.

No official has said the turnover caused those problems, and nothing in the public record establishes that it did. But the timeline raises a question the town has not answered in detail: what happened to Middleborough’s financial controls while the people responsible for them kept changing?

Two long tenures end

Middleborough splits its money work between two offices. The accounting side, now the Finance Department, controls the budget, keeps the general ledger, handles internal audits and financial reporting, and produces the warrants that pay vendors and employees, according to the town’s website. The treasurer/collector’s office takes in, invests and pays out the town’s money, and collects taxes and utility bills.

For years, Steven Dooney ran accounting and Judy MacDonald ran the treasury. MacDonald first held the job as an elected official; a charter change later made it appointed, with her as the first appointee.

Dooney retired in 2022 after more than 15 years as town accountant, according to the Select Board’s annual report for that year. Public payroll records show MacDonald as treasurer/collector through 2021 and a successor in the job in 2022.

The town turned to New Bedford to replace both. R. Renee Fernandes, that city’s treasurer-collector for 15 years, started in Middleborough in October 2022. Robert Ekstrom, a former New Bedford city auditor, started as town accountant on Jan. 31, 2023.

Five months, then a new structure

Ekstrom didn’t stay long. A state administrative-appeals decision in a dispute over his pension credit lays out what happened. In June 2023, New Bedford’s mayor told him the city had been unable to find an acceptable chief financial officer. Ekstrom resigned in Middleborough on July 4, 2023, and became New Bedford’s CFO that October.

His exit came weeks after the town promised more regular financial reporting. In May 2023, then-Town Manager Jay McGrail told the Finance Committee that Ekstrom would begin presenting quarterly financial reports that July, according to the committee’s minutes. McGrail also told members that the town’s auditing firm had been brought on in an emergency the year before, and that the previous audit had shown the town needed new accounting software.

By December 2023, Middleborough had a new finance director, Susan Nickerson, hired by McGrail, and a new structure. McGrail’s monthly report to residents said a series of resignations had prompted a reorganization aimed at a leaner government, including a new assistant town accountant position and an estimated $100,000 in salary savings for fiscal 2024. The town’s 2023 annual report says the town accountant’s office became a Finance Department, with Nickerson at its head.

The public records reviewed for this story do not say who handled the fiscal 2023 year-end close, which fell in the roughly five months between Ekstrom’s resignation and Nickerson’s arrival.

A new system, and a year-end that looked fine

In March 2025, the town moved its finances onto Tyler Technologies’ MUNIS system.

The fiscal 2025 year-end report that followed, prepared under McGrail and presented by Nickerson, showed a positive variance of about $1.3 million, with spending at roughly 97 percent of a $108.5 million budget. Those figures were unaudited.

Then the picture changed

McGrail left in March 2026 to become town administrator in Harwich. At a March 23 Select Board meeting, Interim Town Manager Joseph Perkins reported a potential $3.3 million shortfall, postponed Town Meeting and called for cuts in every department. The revised budget included layoffs and consolidated positions.

In August, Perkins sent a memo to the Select Board and Finance Committee saying CBIZ, the firm auditing fiscal 2025, would not finish before the town’s bond-rating call. He wrote that CBIZ auditor Zach Nowlan and principal manager Scott McIntyre called him Aug. 17, described the audit as “significantly challenging,” and said the finished report would identify internal-control and material weaknesses. According to the memo, CBIZ pointed to four causes:

• the March 2025 software conversion
• a former town employee who reported revenue to the Finance Department in incorrect amounts
• the time needed to trace and reconcile those errors by hand
• thin staffing at both Town Hall and CBIZ

A material weakness is the most serious internal-control finding an auditor issues. It means there is a reasonable possibility that a significant error in the financial statements would not be prevented, or caught and corrected, in time. It is not a finding of fraud.

A week earlier, Nunes had cited the unfinished audit when he recommended delaying Town Meeting. The delay has also had a practical cost. Without a finished audit, the town’s financial adviser, Hilltop Securities, recommended rolling over Middleborough’s short-term borrowing rather than locking in permanent financing. On Sept. 21, the Select Board approved the sale of $11,493,622 in one-year bond anticipation notes at 4.125 percent, according to the meeting minutes.

The audit now reaches back further. On Sept. 28, Interim Town Manager Robert Nunes told the Select Board that CBIZ had asked for more information for the fiscal 2025 audit and that materials from fiscal 2021 would be provided, according to the board’s draft minutes. The G.O.A.T. News first reported the request on Sept. 29. Nunes, a former director of the state Division of Local Services, was Middleborough’s town manager for eight years before retiring in 2022.

The treasury, again

The town’s 2025 annual report listed Fernandes as treasurer/collector, with Jane Blanton as her assistant. On Sept. 1, the town advertised the treasurer/collector job at about $110,000 a year, reporting to the director of finance.

On Sept. 21, Nunes told the boards that both the treasurer/collector and assistant treasurer/collector jobs were vacant and that interviews were under way. That night the Select Board took up naming Nickerson acting treasurer/collector. A week later, Nunes said the vacancies could affect cash flow and collections, and Chair Teresa Farley noted that the town did not have a treasurer/collector, according to the draft minutes.

The town has since filled both jobs. The new treasurer/collector starts Oct. 19, and the new assistant treasurer/collector starts Oct. 26.

Back to a town accountant

The accounting side is changing too. Nickerson plans to retire, and the town has opted to return to the town accountant model it used until late 2023, without a director of finance. That reverses the reorganization McGrail described in December 2023, less than three years after it took effect.

An earlier review

The audit warning follows a 2025 outside review that found no reason for a forensic audit. The town paid about $60,000 for that review, led by accountant and attorney Mary Sahady. It was prompted by concerns raised by the author of this story.

The Finance Committee has since voted to ask the Select Board to pursue a forensic audit.

What comes next

The fiscal 2025 audit has not been issued. In the meantime, the town must file a plan with the state for $682,000 in fiscal 2026 water and trash shortfalls. When the audit is issued, its management letter should show which controls failed and when, and whether the problems trace to the software conversion, the turnover or something else.

Until then, the town has not publicly explained how its financial controls held up through each handoff. Open questions include who covered the accounting office between Ekstrom and Nickerson, how the treasury has been run since Fernandes left and until the new hires start, and whether separate people were recording, approving and reconciling transactions during the gaps.

Barrella is an elected member of the Middleborough Finance Committee and serves on the Town Manager Search Committee. He chaired the Finance Committee from April 2024 to April 2025 and voted for the committee’s motion seeking a forensic audit. This story does not assert that any individual caused, concealed or is responsible for the town’s financial problems.