I sat down with the town’s finance team to go through my questions on fiscal 2024. We agreed the revenue lines up. The spending side still needs an answer, and the town has committed to finding it.

On Thursday, I met with Middleborough’s finance team to walk through the questions I raised Oct. 13 with CBIZ, the firm auditing the town’s fiscal 2025 books, in a memo The G.O.A.T. News has published. Around the table were Interim Town Manager Bob Nunes, Treasurer/Collector Megan Crosby, Assistant Town Accountant Susan Nunes, who is not related to the interim town manager, and Emily Ferguson, administrative assistant in the Town Manager’s office.

It was a good meeting. The team was pleasant and easy to work with, and they said plainly that their goal is transparency and that they want to work with residents and officials who ask for the town’s financial data. I have spent a long time asking for that kind of access. Hearing it stated as the town’s goal matters, and I want to thank them for it.

This is not new. The same spirit of cooperation began under former Interim Town Manager Joseph Perkins, who took a hard look at the budget he inherited and worked with the Finance Committee and the Select Board through the fallout. It is a welcome change from the previous administration. Starting in 2024, the town manager and finance director stopped attending Finance Committee meetings, and my written requests for read-only access to the town’s financial system went unanswered for well over a year. Thursday’s meeting was the opposite of that, and it is the way this work should be done.

We came out of the room agreeing on two things. The town’s fiscal 2024 revenue appears correct. And the difference between two official reports of that year’s spending still needs to be explained. The town has committed to researching the spending side and reporting back.

Two reports, one year

The town has published two sets of general fund results for fiscal 2024. One is the audited financial statements, issued by Hague, Sahady & Co. on July 22, 2025. The other is Schedule A, the year-end report the town files with the state Division of Local Services. The two use different accounting rules, so their totals are not expected to match on their face.

The largest known difference is the state’s payment into the teachers’ retirement system on the town’s behalf. The audit counts it as both revenue and spending, and Schedule A does not. The state’s published figure for Middleborough that year is $7,091,521.

Account for that payment, along with $394,061 in transfers the audit counts and Schedule A does not, and the two reports agree on revenue to within $1,101. That bears out what we agreed at the meeting. It also shows the comparison counts the same things on both sides, which is why the spending gap deserves a careful answer.

The open question is spending

On spending, the audit shows $9,896,501 more than Schedule A. Take out the same pension payment and $2,804,980 remains that the published documents do not explain.

My Oct. 13 memo to the auditors put that figure at about $2.0 million. In that memo I estimated the pension payment from the gap in state revenue. When I replaced the estimate with the state’s own published figure, the revenue side closed to $1,101 and the unexplained spending grew to $2.8 million. Tightening the numbers made the question bigger, not smaller.

I want to be clear about what that number means. It is a difference the published documents do not explain. Timing and classification, such as year-end accruals, purchase orders carried into the next year, or spending recorded under a different heading, may account for some of it. Each of those items has a dollar amount, and a reconciliation from the town’s general ledger would list them. Whatever is left after that will need its own explanation.

What comes next

The finance team said it will research the spending difference and report back, in keeping with the open approach it described at the meeting. I will send CBIZ an updated version of my memo that reflects Thursday’s meeting, including the agreement on revenue and the open question on spending. Fiscal 2025 opens on fiscal 2024’s closing balances, so the answer bears on the audit now under way.

That update asks the auditors for five things, all on the spending side: a line-by-line list, with dollar amounts, of what makes up the $2.8 million; confirmation of where the town recorded the state’s $7.1 million pension payment; an explanation of why general government and education spending are higher in the audit than on Schedule A; an accounting of the $1.1 million the general fund transferred out, and where Schedule A reports it; and confirmation of which line of the town’s Schedule A filing the $96.7 million spending figure comes from.

This is why Middleborough has an elected Finance Committee. Town Meeting relies on it to examine the numbers before residents vote on them, and that only works if the numbers can be checked. Every figure in this column comes from documents anyone can download. Comparing them takes time, and asking the questions takes persistence, but it is the job voters gave us.

I look forward to continuing this work with the town. When the finance team reports back, The G.O.A.T. News will publish what it finds. If you have questions about the town’s finances, bring them to a Finance Committee meeting. The more residents who ask, the more this kind of cooperation becomes the way Middleborough does business.

John Barrella publishes The G.O.A.T. News and serves on the Middleborough Finance Committee and the Town Manager Search Committee. The views here are his own and not those of the Finance Committee.