Expressing frustration about the lack of financial information made available by Town Administrator Mark Andrews over the past 14 months, including any data related to the town's unaccounted for $919,000, the Finance Committee this week delayed a vote on whether to support the town's acquisition of several big-ticket "capital" items on the agenda for October Town Meeting.

"You're asking for expenditures to be made. ... You're asking us to make judgments without information," Finance Committee Chair Frank Heath told Town Administrator Mark Andrews during the committee's Wednesday, September 21 meeting. “In business, [people] would laugh at me.”

FinCom members also delayed a vote in order to hear the Capital Planning Committee's recommendations regarding Andrews' proposal. That committee helps plan for such acquisitions and will not discuss the proposal until Tuesday, September 27.

Town Meeting voters will be asked to approve various purchases and leases, including: Purchases of 40 defibrillators, a generator, and a parking meter system for Wareham Police; Leases for a prisoner transport vehicle a four-wheel drive vehicle for the police; Funding for an ambulance rebuild for Emergency Medical Services; A three-year lease of seven school buses.

The Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee vote on whether to recommend favorable action on each of the agenda items appearing before Town Meeting. Those votes are then published in the warrant in an effort to help voters decide which way to vote on Town Meeting floor.

“The Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee have to sit before the citizens of this town who will ask ... 'Can we afford to purchase these items?'" Heath noted.

Finance Committee members say they currently can't answer that question.

Andrews has repeatedly said that independent auditors hired by the town will soon present information to the Board of Selectmen regarding the $919,000 discrepancy in the town's books, which was discovered by the auditors in March and reflected in a draft audit of Wareham's fiscal year 2010 financial statements.

Spring Town Meeting, regularly scheduled in April, was delayed until May due to financial uncertainty. The auditors and town attorneys eventually gave the green light for Town Meeting to proceed.

Andrews has declined to say how much of the “missing” money has been accounted for thus far.

“Whatever information comes out of the completion of the fiscal year 2010-2011 audit, we're very close to getting that information," Andrews told the FinCom Wednesday.

Andrews stressed that though the administration is asking Town Meeting voters to approve the proposal, the items would not be acquired immediately.

"We're asking the [Town Meeting] body to give us the authorization," Andrews said. "It doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to put these [items] into [Treasurer/Collector John Foster's] notebook on day one."

This was little consolation to FinCom members.

"If we don't know what we have, why are we spending?" Finance Committee member Donna Bronk asked.

The Finance Committee discussed the proposal with town administration for more than an hour before tabling the discussion until it could hear the Capital Planning Committee's thoughts.

Defibrillators, generator

Andrews is proposing that the town purchase 40 new defibrillators for the Police Department at a total cost of $84,000. The department's current defibrillator model has not been manufactured for about a decade and the company will cease making replacement parts in January 2012.

A new generator for the Police Department would cost $40,000. Andrews said the generator is needed because it was discovered that the current unit was inadequate for the station's needs during Tropical Storm Irene.

Parking program

Andrews is proposing the town purchase a $75,000 parking system that would be used at the municipal lot off of Union Avenue in Onset. Drivers would pay for parking at the machine and receive a ticket to display in the window of their vehicle for the duration of the time for which they paid.

The program is an effort to bring in more revenue from beach-goers who visit Onset in the summer but do not pay to park in the parking lot at the town pier.

"It's going to pay for itself," Andrews said.

Finance Committee members – some of whom had been pushing for such a program to be implemented - were supportive of the idea.

Prisoner transport vehicle, four-wheel drive vehicle

Voters will be asked to approve separate three-year leases on a prisoner transport vehicle and a four-wheel drive vehicle for Wareham Police, as well as six months of payments for each lease, totaling $10,700 for the prisoner transport vehicle and $9,720 for the four-wheel drive vehicle.

Andrews said he and the Police Department are trying to be proactive in the lease of the prisoner transport vehicle. The state could soon close the Wareham District Court, and if that happens, the town will need to comply with specific requirements for transporting male, female, and juvenile prisoners to another court.

"We would have to transport at cost to us... [and] separate out by gender and by age," Andrews said. The proposed closure“throws a wrinkle into our plans because you would not have seen a prisoner transport vehicle in my capital plan last year."

The four-wheel drive vehicle would replace a marked shift supervisor's 2007 model SUV, which currently has 120,000 miles on it.

Finance Committee member Dominic Cammarano predicted the leases would be a tough sell to Town Meeting voters.

"I believe the town already feels that the Police Department has gotten all the vehicles and everything they've requested,” he said. “We're going to come to a point where they say, 'Enough vehicles is enough. We need to spend the money on other things.' ... I think it's going to be a tough pill to swallow.”

Ambulance rebuild

In an effort to get more life out of one of the town's existing ambulances, Andrews is proposing the town spend $150,000 on what is called an "ambulance rebuild."

A rebuild essentially overhauls an ambulance, replacing existing parts with new ones.

“We haven't rebuilt or gotten a new ambulance in service in at least seven or eight years, from what I can gather,” Andrews pointed out.

Finance Committee member David Trudell noted that the town could get eight to 10 additional years out the rebuilt ambulance. Purchasing a new vehicle would cost roughly $214,000.

School buses

The town has been discussing how to obtain school buses to replace those in the School Department's aging fleet since at least 2009.

A three-year lease of seven buses, with payments totaling $91,000 for 12 months, is proposed.

“This has been talked about until pretty much everyone's blue into the face," Andrews said.

The FinCom discussed whether a lease was the best way to get new buses and invited School Superintendent Dr. Barry Rabinovitch and School Committee Chair Geoff Swett to discuss the matter during a meeting of the FinCom on Thursday, September 22.

The consensus of the FinCom and school officials was that the town needs to get on an schedule of replacing at least five buses per year, making the average age of the fleet around five years old. Andrews was not in attendance Thursday.

“We can live with a fleet that's an average of five years of age with some [buses] remaining 10 [years old],” said Swett. Some of the School Department's buses are around 15 years old.

After much discussion, the FinCom agreed to recommend to Town Meeting that a committee be formed consisting of school and town officials, a FinCom member, and a member of the town's Capital Planning Committee in order to come up with a set-in-stone plan for purchasing buses at Town Meeting in April.

Town Meeting begins on October 24 at 7 p.m. in the Wareham High School auditorium.

The Finance Committee must complete all of its recommendations to voters by September 28, Heath said.

The Board of Selectmen weighed in on the agenda items during its September 20 meeting, despite some members asking to hold off because Selectman Steve Holmes was absent and the FinCom had not yet voted.

Selectmen Chair Walter Cruz urged the board to vote, saying the warrant had to go to the printers at the end of this week. It is unclear whether the Selectmen have more time to complete the recommendations or whether the board will choose to revise its votes.