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player ready...The five towns of the Northern Will County Water Agency need to implement formalized procedures to better track the organization’s finances, an auditor told officials at the agency’s final meeting of the year Monday in Woodridge.
The audit of the agency, the first in its history, found it running deficits at the end of each fiscal year from 2009 to 2014.
The recommendations were made to Bolingbrook, Homer Glen, Romeoville, Lemont and Woodridge by Dan Berg of Sikich LLP, which conducted the audit.
“What it shows is that we have negative equity” for the years covered by the audit, Berg said. “The members will need to reassess dues and assessments in order to bring those back to a zero balance going forward.”
The agency is in the midst of a legal battle to seize control of a Lake Michigan water supply system from American Lake Water Co.
While it’s anybody’s guess when the eminent domain lawsuit will make its way to a courtroom, the agency’s eventual plan is to sell water to municipalities at a cheaper rate than the privately owned water company.
Water company officials have countered with the fact that the towns have put forth no plan for how they would save customers money.
For now, the agency’s sole business is the litigation that has cost the towns more than $1 million so far.
The audit presented Monday was only a few pages long. Berg said it would “be relatively easy” to set up billing procedures and other processes to ensure the agency doesn’t carry negative balances at the end of its fiscal years.
“Auditors would like to have something to audit,” Berg said.
Water agency attorney Jim Boan said those negative balances reflect what the towns owe the agency.
If the agency wins in court and then forces a purchase of the water distribution system, the agency would pay back its member towns the money put forth for the purchase.
Agency members agreed to draft such procedures by the next meeting early in 2015.
On Monday, the agency also passed an estimated 2015 budget of $664,800.
Most of that will go toward litigation payments to law firm Tressler LLP.
Agency members pay in to the organization based on how many taps are supplied by the disputed water system.
Bolingbrook pays about 80 percent of the agency’s tab because of its 23,000 customers.
Homer Glen has 6,000 customers and chips in about 20 percent of expenses.
Woodridge has just 200 pipeline-supplied taps, while Lemont had 17 and Romeoville just six as of last year, making their financial contributions to the agency minuscule by comparison.
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