Maine Municipal Tax Collectors' & Treasurers' Association
Home	Training	Executive Board		Newsletters	Links	Forms
MMTCTA List Serve					Back to List Serve Index

Posted by Gwen May (Swan's Island) June 16, 2005:

We have just had the State Auditor here checking our procedures etc. and he was grumbling about the way I keep my green and pink automobile registrations filed. I understood, from the selectman, that the auditor wants them kept in numeric order and wants a running tally of the 2 previous years sales, unissued, etc.

My question is......... how do you all keep your registrations filed? My green are filed alphabetically by name and the pink are by the month and alphabetically within the month. Seems easy to me but is there an easier way?

Responses

Here in Weston, I file my green copies stapled with my weekly report, and my pink copies are filed in alphabetically order in a file. (Margaret Frye, Weston)

Here in Newry we do it your way not the states !! (Loretta Berry, Newry)

In Mariaville I keep the green by issue date and the pink alphabetically for the year. I would not want the alphabetical set to be further sorted by month. With your method how do you know where to look for a person? The way I am doing it works fine for me and the state auditor who was recently here did not complain about it. He did "grumble" about a few other things! (Mark Johnson, Mariaville)

We file the green copy alphabetically. The pink copy is filed separately by the transaction date. The State Auditor was here several months ago and made no comment about how we file these. Perhaps they are looking for different things at different locations. He did suggest that we track the usage of registration forms and wanted to go back a couple of years. In our opinion manpower did not allow us to go back two years so the Board of Selectmen decided to track this as we move forward. So in two years we will have two years worth of data. (David Kinney, Lincolnville)

we keep our greens alpa by year and our pinks are numerical each days work stapled with a tape with the total of each day (Nancy Marble, Wells)

We file the green alphabetically and the pink are kept with the weekly reports. (Laurie Boucher, Richmond)

We had a State Examiner here a couple of years ago and he took issue with EVERYTHING. He did not like the way I filed my pinks/greens either. Our auditors found nothing wrong with my filing system. The only difference in the way you and I file is that I alternate the way I file them. One year I file my pinks alphabetically and my green copies numerically. The next year I switch. I do this because I helps avoid confusion at the beginning of the new year. (Dawna Myrick, Hallowell)

The State Auditor stopped by the Woodland Town Office last year and commented us on the way we filed our pink, green and voided Motor Vehicle copies.
We file our green copies alpabetically, our pink copies are filed daily in numerical order and are stapled with a calculated tab for each the excise amount, agent fees and registration fee. We match the calculator tab with our daily reports before doing the nightly deposit. At the end of the month, we run another tab of the daily totals and staple the month end tab, pink copies, our monthly receipting report and monthly accounting report all together and place them in a box in the vault (in case the State Auditor stops by!!) This works out very well. Our voided copies are filed in numerical order and are kept in the same file drawer as our green copies. (Janelle Ziegler, Woodland)

We just had the state auditor here on Monday. He accepted the way we file things without much comment. We do greens alpha and pinks numerical weekly to coinside with our reports. I regret to say - the auditor and I had quite a hard start as I found him rude and I was not confident that he even knew what he was doing.. After the audit was complete he said he found things fine and in very good order - no problems. Hope I don't see him for awhile (Eve Wilkenson, Gouldsboro)

Here in Eliot we file our MVR3 forms very much like the Town of Woodland. We file our green copies alphabetically and our pink copies numerically with a calculator tape total for excise collected and verify the amount with our computer generated audit report at the end of the day. At the end of the month we run a tape for our monthly excise tax total, verify and band together for storage in a box in the vault for future audit use if necessary. Our voided copies are filed in numerical order and are kept in the same file drawer as the green copies under a separate “VOID” tab. We file daily and have never had a problem locating a record if necessary. Hope this information is helpful!! (Wendy Rawski, Eliot)

The state auditor was here a couple of years ago. I file my green slips alphabetically and pink slips numerically. He picked a month at random and had me pull all the pink slips to go with the excise tax receipts. It would have been much easier if I could have pulled the green slips by name but he insisted that I look them all up using the pink slips ONLY. Took some digging on some of them and it took a lot longer than if I had just gone thru the green slips. Even when I tried to save time by looking up the green to get the tax receipt number so I could go right to the pink he said NO. I could only use the pink slips. I thought I was fairly well organized especially with my new receipting software but the way he had me doing it took forever.

I know this auditor was not feeling good the day he was here. I waited for almost a year to see what the out come of the audit was. When we did get the report it obviously had been written by someone other than the man I met with. It had little or nothing to do with what had happened that day. An audit can serve as a good learning experience. This audit really didn't prove much of anything as far as I was concerned.

My regular auditor has his assistant do the random testing and she pulls the receipts and whatever other records they need. My filing the green slips alphabetically and pink slips numerically works out for the regular audit. They use both. They can check and see if any MV1s or MV2s are missing. Maybe the state auditor just tries a different method each place he goes to keep everyone off guard. (Kathy Lausier, New Sweden)

Lamoine keeps the green copies in alphabetical order by year and the pink copies in chronological order bundled by day then bundled by the bi-weekly report. While on the issue of the Bureau of Audit, the MMTCTA website (www.mmtcta.org) has a set of policies supplied by the Bureau for your convenience should you wish to use any of them. (Stu Marckoon, Lamoine)

Here in Berwick we file the green copies alphabetically and the pink forms are filed numerically by day and then by each month. (Sandy Guptill, Berwick)

HERE IN NAPLES WE FILE THE GREEN ONES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER AND THE PINK ONES ARE FILED WITH EACH CASH UP BY DATE. (Judy in Naples)

I have been reading everyone's messages about the State "Audit" you are now going through. Beware the State audit! I had mine over a year ago and was anxious to see if there were things I could improve (we always can, can't we?). There were some small changes that could be made but nothing earthshaking. A group of local citizens read about it in the paper and ran with it. "The town is all messed up. The State had to come in and do an audit. We've lost faith in our town government, etc. etc." . They immediately started a publicity blitz in the local paper and formed a Governance committee. No matter what I or the Selectmen showed them, I could not convince them that it was just a recommendation process on the State's behalf. I had been audited. We even gathered a half dozen other town's "audits" (which were almost word for word like ours) to show them. So, my first suggestion is to stop using the word "audit". (The State didn't even call it that on the paperwork they sent, but I can't remember now what term they used.)
The results in our town? This last year has been pure h_ll! Meetings upon meetings, going over all my duties and everyone else's here in the town office (many times), addressing job descriptions, evaluations, going to town meeting and voting in five selectmen instead of three, a new bidding policy, a recall policy for the Selectmen, a part-time certified assessors' assistant and the topper, a new Town Administrator (we only have a population of 1,800). No one wanted to listen to anything the present officials or appointees tried to explain and we are now basically a town run by the Governance committee. If I sound bitter, I guess I am. The whole complexion of our nice, little community has changed and all because of a handful of people and the fact that we were "audited."

Good luck and keep your eyes open. We all know how hard we work and we do it all for them! Thanks for letting me vent and I hope this gives a "heads up" in case anyone else should run into this. (Lynn Maloney, Newcastle)

Thanks for the "heads up", Lynn. We just got our letter from the Dept of Audit saying they're coming. When I speak about it, I will use their term from now on: "Municipal Internal Control Observation Program" instead of
"Audit"! (Paulette Borja, Alton)

Thanks for the reply. Good luck with your MICOP. The funny part is that it
was really nothing to go through. I had forgotten about it until these
citizens started coming forward! It was just reported in the local paper
under the Selectmen's news like any other (semi-boring) agenda item we had
gone over. Go figure! (Lynn Maloney)