WOONSOCKET – This city has spent some $750,000 on outside help to catch up on late municipal audits, but still isn’t close to up to date.
At a special meeting of the City Council on Aug. 24, the council and Mayor Chris Beauchamp discussed the situation, with Beauchamp saying he’s not thrilled with the work either of two outside firms, CLA or CBIZ, have completed based on the money they’ve been paid.
“It’s staggering,” he said of the total, referring to the figures as “scary numbers.”
The mayor said no one is happy with where they are, adding that the CLA accounting firm has put together information that Interim Finance Director Christine Chamberland isn’t happy with. He said they remain two or three people down in the finance office, but they’re not making excuses. Beauchamp said it feels as if every time they take a step forward, they go back, as someone solid leaves for a new position.
Council President Dan Gendron said he called the meeting to get an update on everything related to finances, including a status conference the previous week with the Office of the Auditor General.
Beauchamp said they’ve been through two finance directors. The first they weren’t happy with and the second they thought would “sit there forever.” Now they are where they are, he said.
Beauchamp said the 2024 audit is a week or week and a half away from being sent to auditing firm CBIZ for the next step of the process. The 2025 audit has had a lot of work done on it already, he said.
CLA has had representatives in the office regularly, but their bills, said Beauchamp, have been “astronomical,” and for what they’ve paid for, they’re not happy with the final product.
Gendron said he wanted to spend most of the night looking forward, not back.
Chamberland said she’s working as hard as she can as she fills in, and she feels she can get the 2024 audit information in by Labor Day. The next call with the Auditor General’s Office is the Tuesday after Labor Day.
Gendron sought and received clarification that the internal accounting required will be completed in two weeks, not that the audit itself will be done.
Chamberland said the powers that be keep wanting the audit sooner, but as finance director, her responsibility is to make sure the report is accurate, first and foremost. Gendron agreed, saying “good data in, good data out, bad data in, bad data out.”
Gendron recounted how the council passed a resolution in August 2024 authorizing $35,000 to CLA to supplement the city’s short finance staff. In March 2025, the matter came back to the council and it was said that $25,000 had already been expended and they would probably need another $35,000 for work on the 2023 and 2024 audits. The council approved that as well.
Including those two resolutions of a combined $70,000, the city has spent $264,000 with CLA to try and supplement staffing in finance, he said.
Chamberland needs help, said Gendron, and catching up is not something she’s going to be able to do on her own. In March, officials requested creation of new positions to try to get CLA out of the building. The city can’t sustain these types of figures, Gendron said, adding that while he knew about the $70,000, he was shocked after learning of the much higher figures.
Answering Gendron’s question on where they are now, five months after that March decision to get help, and Beauchamp said they filled the system controller position and issued a request for proposals that day for a deputy controller. He said hopefully they would get some qualified candidates, mentioning that someone in treasury is getting their accounting degree and will hopefully apply. The mayor said they need another two people in the office for it to be efficient.
Gendron said he thought someone had been groomed for the accounting and compliance administrator position, and Beauchamp clarified that that’s the person from treasury who they believe is ready.
The mayor said they’re trying to be smart about training up people from within, but the city’s pay scale continues to impact that effort. One person went on maternity leave and never came back, and another they thought would move up got a better-paying job elsewhere. He said he wishes they had “all that lawsuit money back” to pay people more.
Gendron referred to the “ills and errors” of the immediate past, but said they need to do something, because the CLA fees are crushing the city. Nearly all of $453,935 in charges from CBIZ were for work on the 2023 audit, he said, but as audits get more current, those costs are not expected to remain consistent.
He said they’ve already spent $100,000 on the 2024 report, asking Chamberland what she expects to pay for subsequent years. She said the agreement in place starts with $155,000 for 2024, then $160,000 for 2025, then continuing to go up by $5,000 each year.
Beauchamp said he believes there will be financial credits with CBIZ going forward. He said fees were wildly inflated because the company couldn’t get certain people to perform tasks, so they were paying much higher hourly rates to someone higher up. Both Gendron and Beauchamp said they’re not judging the company based on performance, but on the money and hourly rate for what they were getting.
“…Weeks and months billing at the highest rate, I don’t believe it’s fair,” said Beauchamp, then making his comment on the “staggering” and “scary numbers.”
Gendron said that looking forward, he would like to hope things will be done differently and positions they authorized back in March will be filled.
Solicitor Michael Lepizzera said it was a year ago that the council capped audit fees in a three-year contract, through 2007, with CBIZ so they don’t have a repeat of 2023.
Gendron said things need to move as quickly as possible. Changes don’t work if positions aren’t filled, he said, and CLA is not the answer to get Chamberland the help she needs.
Councilor Jim Cournoyer asserted that while audits are late, they’re not the three or five years late that many are claiming. The 2024 audit is 18 months past due, he said, and 2025 is eight months overdue.
He asked Chamberland if she feels comfortable that she has the capability and knowledge to get through everything she needs to, and whether it’s just a matter of having the time to do it, and she said yes on both counts. Chamberland still has a day job, he said, and can’t be expected to do everything.
Cournoyer said he’s also a little concerned on “all these grants we chase,” saying he doesn’t think there’s always enough appreciation for how much work they’ll be from an administrative standpoint. There’s the press release with a big check, he said, then the city has to act as the bank, accumulate a bunch of paperwork, chase money to make sure it comes back, then complete audits. If Chamberland feels they’re too much, he said, she should push back to make sure she has the bandwidth to do everything she needs to.
Cournoyer said he would prioritize getting the sewer bills out first before finalizing the 2024 audit. The second priority should be 2026, he said, because he’s very concerned, based on what he’s seen so far, that the city could be facing a substantial deficit. If there is such a deficit, he added, it’s an immediate issue they have to deal with.
The councilman said residents should be prepared for an increase in sewer bills, noting that they haven’t gone up in a long time.
Cournoyer said the figures to CBIZ and CLA over 18 months were actually $865,000, and that illustrates that there needs to be better internal management.
Pushing back on Beauchamp’s comment on low salaries, Cournoyer said they went quite high for the last finance director, so it’s not always about salaries. They need to get good people, he said, as Chamberland is “trying to move heaven and earth,” but only has so much time as she digs out of a “considerable hole.” He’s confident she can help get them out of it, he stated, but it’s going to take time.
Councilor Valerie Gonzalez thanked Chamberland for transitioning into every new role they need her for. She said Chamberland could also have left the city as others have, but she’s continuously plugged holes and done so impressively, working way past her regular hours.
Gonzalez said it almost feels as if the city is paying for work from outside firms that Chamberland ends up having to do. She sought clarification from Chamberland that she believes she’ll get what she needs for future audits.
On grants, Gonzalez said, not all are created equal, and she said the city should continue to prioritize acquiring significant money from them where it makes sense, assessing each on face value. Cournoyer said he agreed with that.
Gendron also urged caution on grants, saying they’re not always what they’re made out to be. He said he agrees with Cournoyer on Chamberland’s time and priorities, and more staffing will help her keep up.
The council president said it’s right to train people from within, rather than pull in a new employee off the street, and said the priority now needs to be on filling those positions. He cautioned that Chamberland’s heavy workload could become dangerous if they’re not careful. It’s time to “get competence back in City Hall,” said Gendron, and they can’t expect a few to do the work of many.
Beauchamp said he appreciated that Gendron set up the meeting. He said it’s “numbing sometimes” to think they’ve got the right people in place, only to experience another setback as someone leaves.
Update: Former Council President John Ward, in a post Monday, questioned why not one person mentioned the failure of the major and finance director to notify the council that the spending for CLA would exceed the $70,000 authorized by more than $240,000.
“Where was Councilwoman Gonzalez’s concern and request for a ‘conversation’ with CLA to assess their position on the problems referred to by the unofficial finance director?” he asked. “Why didn’t any other council person demand identification of responsibility as so easily happened back in 2024 when a bill exceeded authorization by $50,000? When will the mayor and unofficial finance director admit that they knew of the hundreds of thousands of unauthorized spending took place and admits as the mayor did when laying blame on me that ‘this is not right.'”
He said he has a hard time believing Beauchamp didn’t realize that the city was hemorrhaging money to CLA without council approval, and yet continued to do it from September 2025 to June 2026.
Ward posted an excerpt from a 2024 article by this writer where Beauchamp was quoted saying he had a hard time believing Ward didn’t realize that a second bill to an attorney investigating former Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt would exceed $15,000. Gonzalez was also quoted in that story questioning the high cost of the attorney bills.
