Belgium back in compliance

The Belgium Village Board this month approved an updated purchasing policy and eliminated its bid solicitation ordinance after it was determined staff had been following neither.

Village Treasurer Vickie Boehnlein discovered the discrepancies soon after she took the job and checked the village’s policy of internal controls.

The Finance and Personnel Committee last month hammered out the details of the purchasing policy and decided to eliminate the bid solicitation ordinance.

The new policy puts the responsibility to ensure purchases are within the budget on each department head.

The old policy said any unspecified purchase of $1,000 or more had to be approved by the board. Boehnlein said the policy was “convoluted and unclear.”

Public Works Director Dan Birenbaum posed the scenario of a $3,000 generator going down and its purchase would put the department over budget.

“I’m not going to call a special Village Board meeting to order that because we need it,” he said.

“Well, you’re supposed to,” Boehnlein said.

“What are we supposed to do? Run out of water?” Birenbaum asked.

The new policy removed the “unspecified” clause. Spending that would exceed the budget must be approved by the board except for emergencies. In those cases, the board must allocate emergency purchases from fund balance at its next meeting.

The old policy limited total credit card purchases to $1,000 per month, but Boehnlein said the credit card company keeps increasing the spending limits on the village’s four cards. The new policy says that credit card purchases may not exceed $1,000 per month per card without approval by the village president.

The old policy required the village clerk, treasurer and president to sign checks. The president, Boehnlein said, hadn’t been signing checks for years. Former board President Richard Howells didn’t sign checks and Boehnlein, who succeeded him before leaving to apply for the treasurer’s job, didn’t either.

“We don’t even have three lines for signatures on checks,” she said.

The new policy requires checks be signed by two people, reviewed by the clerk and treasurer and coded by another department head.

Regarding bills, the board had been approving them monthly but never saw them.

State ordinance requires the board get a list of what bills have been paid.

“There’s no reason to approve it in a Village Board meeting,” Finance and Personnel Chairman Josh Borden said.

“No, that’s my point. The only reason to approve it is if the ordinance says the board has to approve it. Ours does now, but again, you were blindly approving without any information what you were approving,” Boehnlein said.

The bid solicitation ordinance required any purchase more than $10,000 go through a formal bid procedure, including publication. The village hadn’t been following the procedure and decided to eliminate the ordinance.

The Finance and Personnel Committee approved the changes, 3-0. The Village Board approved the recommendation, 5-0.