Emails Between Officials Underscore Budget Confusion

Communication issues among members of the West Deptford township committee drove the May 2 meeting of the body, with committee members Denice DiCarlo and Sam Cianfarini challenging each other over the 2013 municipal budget.

During that meeting, DiCarlo said her inability to get answers of depth to a number of specific questions posed of West Deptford CFO Brenda Sprigman added to her frustration with the process.

Afterward, DiCarlo produced a string of email correspondences that she said illustrated some of her difficulties along the way.

Correspondence 

In one email exchange dated April 12, DiCarlo asked Sprigman, “Who is handling the budget this year? You or the Auditors?”

Sprigman's reply is, “The budget is being handled this year the same as last year to the best of my knowledge.”

In that same message, DiCarlo asks Sprigman to identify an around-about figure of “total anticipated revenues at this point in the budget process,” i.e., 2013 numbers.

Sprigman’s answer: “This report is for 2012 revenues received.”

In an email dated April 9, DiCarlo wrote to Sprigman to discuss a report she had apparently received from the acting CFO that contained formatting and other errors.

“I’m basically trying to understand where we are with the budget process at this point,” the email reads.

“Last year (early in the year) I received a memo from the Treasurer which gave me a budget worksheet as well as anticipated revenues in an excel file. The excel file you gave me isn’t actually something I would expect a committee person to receive, it appears to be a work in progress."

DiCarlo’s email continues, asking Sprigman when the committee should expect to introduce its budget, whether the committee had requested an extension on that date from the state, and “when will you give the committee a good draft so we can start to review?”

Sprigman’s brief reply accounted for the formatting errors as the result of a glitch in a data import, and closed with the following statement: 

“I will defer to [township administrator] Eric Campo on the answers to the remaining questions at this time.”

'Not even on the same playing field'

“I’m sending emails [asking] when can I get these reports,” DiCarlo told Patch. “Here’s the responses I get.”

“When are we required to introduce a budget? She says, 'I don’t know.' Are you doing the budget? She says 'I believe we’re doing it the way we did it last year.'

Prior to the introduction of the 2012 budget, DiCarlo said, board members were provided with a much more comprehensive package that contained an abstract of the overall budget with specific numbers.

By comparison, DiCarlo showed Patch the documents provided to her in advance of the May 2 meeting: a two-page, boilerplate budget cover sheet that did not contain any financial information. 

Without detailed information, she said, it's impossible to accurately assess the financial picture of the township.

"We’re board members," DiCarlo said. "We’re not even starting on the same playing field because the assessed value [of a home in the township] went down."

'I rely on our professionals'

After that meeting, Cianfarini told Patch that communication with DiCarlo had been strained because he believed anything the two shared that wasn't in writing could potentially become political fodder.

"I tried communicating early on; I want things in emails because it’s been manipulated too much," he said.

DiCarlo, however, said the budget information Cianfarini provided before the meeting was simply insufficient for her or other committee members to analyze in any degree of depth.

Invoking the state best practices for municipal budgets—which notes that, “at an absolute minimum, each CFO should prepare audit-ready financial records,” DiCarlo said in the public session “less than 24 hours ago, we got this standard budget [document], which doesn’t tell us anything.

"I have sent multiple emails to our acting CFO, who I know is trying, and we have not had the information," DiCarlo told Cianfarini from the dais.

Cianfarini responded that he relies on the skills of township administrative staff, including CFO Brenda Sprigman, in managing technical budget issues.

“I rely on the administration," Cianfarini said. "I rely on our professionals. I deal with them."