The V.I. Waste Management Authority is within sight of catching up on its audits, and the authority’s board of directors heard the results of the utility’s 2023 audit during a presentation from firm Bert Smith and Company Tuesday.
Accountant George Willie presented the findings, noting progress in several areas of the authority’s overall financial health and room for improvement in WMA’s payments to vendors and equipment management.
“And so in your management letter, we’re going to tell you: you got to get your accounts payable under control,” Willie said.
Willie also noted a qualification, or issue, with the authority’s fixed assets.
“Two sets of issues,” he said. “One, when the transfer was made from … Public Works, you got a lot of equipment that you use [which] were never titled to this organization. I’ve raised this matter before, and I know there was an attempt a couple years ago to get it together, but it has not been resolved.”
Consequently, “some of that equipment … is not good anymore. It’s obsolete, but it’s still being carried on your books.”
Further, some equipment the authority received after the 2017 hurricanes wasn’t properly recorded. Public Works Commissioner Derek Gabriel said he thought the problem stemmed from not properly attributing assets to the correct divisions.
“I felt good about that being done because I’ve only been with the Authority since 2022, and in those three years we’ve knocked out six different audits,” interim Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Daryl Griffith told the Source Tuesday night. Griffith said the WMA’s 2024 audit will be finished by the end of this year, “so showing good … improvement in the financial progression of Waste Management.”
On Tuesday, the board also ratified four actions taken by the board since its last meeting. Those included two wage agreements, a six-month contract with Marco to pick up garbage from the Mon Bijou bin site on St. Croix, and an emergency garbage collection contract awarded to Just Right Trucking in January after the authority’s previous contractor, Bates Trucking, stopped work due to nonpayment.
Griffith said during Tuesday’s meeting that the authority expects to have resolved some of the utility’s fixed asset issues by the time Willie returns to conduct the 2024 audit.
“But I’m not as 100 percent comfortable in that as I am in the work that we’ve been doing with accounts payable, so we’re going to have to increase the pace for that,” he said.
Griffith told the Source that WMA is expecting to receive its notice to proceed this week on the Community Development Block Grant-funded conversion of convenience centers on St. Croix, after which the authority can award the contract and begin design work.
“So we’re very excited about that,” he said. “St. Croix is going to hopefully be a lot cleaner, because that’s one of our major goals — is to really get rid of all the littering and the debris that’s all over that island.”
