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Marblehead has begun paying the bill for replacing its two top financial officials, and none of the money was in this year's budget.
The Finance Committee voted unanimously Monday to transfer $67,000 out of its reserve fund in two pieces: $41,000 to the Select Board's department-head line to cover an accrued vacation payout to Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer, who retires Dec. 31, and $26,000 to the board's other professional and technical line for executive recruiting through the Collins Center. Of that second amount, $16,000 covers the search for Kezer's successor and $10,000 the search to replace Chief Financial Officer Aleesha Nunley Benjamin, whose last day is Aug. 21.
Both transfers are contingent on Select Board approval. Benjamin told the committee the board was scheduled to take them up Wednesday and had already signaled support. When Eric Knight pressed her on whether the board had at least verbally signed off — transfer requests normally reach the Finance Committee after the originating board has acted — Benjamin said it had, and that the delay came from the Select Board meeting this week rather than last.
Asked why the items required a reserve transfer at all, Benjamin confirmed they were not budgeted.
The $41,000 is not severance. Kezer, who announced in June that he would leave roughly halfway through a contract running to June 2028, is retiring voluntarily, and Select Board Chair Dan Fox has said he will receive no early-retirement package. His base salary is $223,176, with a $5,000 automobile allowance on top. Nothing in Monday's discussion established whether the $41,000 represents all of his accrued vacation or what other separation payments, if any, the town still owes.
The two transfers are what survived a longer list. Benjamin said an estimate of roughly $150,000 covering interim finance coverage and cash-reconciliation consulting was pulled back for now, along with $50,000 budgeted for police education incentives for two officers when only one has been hired. Pat Franklin, who had seen the original list, was blunt about it.
"But the total was alarming," he said.
Benjamin said more requests are coming. She typically budgets about $50,000 a year for retirement payouts, she said, but this year's cuts left that line effectively empty, and more employees are retiring than expected, including Chief King and the cemetery superintendent. The committee's reserve fund stands at $440,000, up from $414,000, and would drop to $373,000 once these two transfers clear.
The most expensive piece of the transition is not the recruiting. When Benjamin leaves, an interim chief financial officer from CliftonLarsonAllen will take her seat and work with Kezer, and the town is separately looking for someone to train her finance staff, several of whom are new. She described the $150,000 figure as an estimate covering that coverage plus cash reconciliation, not a fixed cost, and said she is trying to hold the number down by working with the new town accountant.
Cash reconciliation is the recurring expense underneath all of it. The work verifies that what the town's accounting system says it holds matches actual bank activity and receipts, and Marblehead has been paying consultants to do it — about $80,000 last year, by Benjamin's account, with $80,000 to $90,000 likely this year. She said she has cleared every audit finding since becoming chief financial officer except the one on cash, which she said has appeared in the town's audit for eight years. Reconciliations are running months behind: in August, she said, she was still pushing to get June posted to the ledger, when the month should close about two weeks after it ends.
Her answer is structural. Benjamin has split the combined treasurer-collector job back into two positions and is interviewing for a treasurer, arguing the consolidated role has been unworkable since roughly 2018 as systems and requirements changed.
"It's too much for one person, so we're splitting those jobs up," she said.
She identified funding without new appropriation: $69,000 in the trash budget for a position that will not be filled, because the override replaced the trash fee the job was tied to; about $50,000 freed as the town accountant absorbs the budget analyst's duties for a $20,000 stipend; and about $30,000 left over after the information technology director was graded at up to $120,000 against $150,000 budgeted. Whether those amounts hold depends on the hires actually being made.
Finance Committee Chair Molly Teets said the split is not a place to economize.
"We've tried consolidating that role, and it's it's not working," she said. "And it's costing us a lot in consulting fees."
Hiring is the constraint. Benjamin said accounting, treasury and her own position are the hardest municipal finance jobs to fill right now, and that Marblehead's refusal to offer any remote work drives candidates off.
"The talent will apply, and then they just withdraw as soon as we tell them we don't have remote capability," she said.
Benjamin also said she has prepared a transition report for the next chief financial officer — a finance-office counterpart to the "big book" Kezer has been assembling for his successor, and the first such handoff document described publicly for that office.
She left the committee with better news on revenue. Estimated local receipts came in about $425,000 above the $8,941,742 she had budgeted, driven by roughly $655,000 more in vehicle excise than the $3.7 million projected and a police detail administrative fee that produced $138,103 against an $11,000 budget. Building permits ran about $41,000 short. The town turned back roughly $1.2 million and the schools about $870,000, though Benjamin cautioned the books do not close until encumbrances clear Aug. 15.
On the override itself, she reported two of four firefighters and one of two police officers hired so far, with academy training meaning the remaining positions may take another year to show up.
The first public accounting of that spending is still coming in October, and its shape remains unsettled. Teets said the quarterly review required under the memorandum of understanding among the Finance Committee, Select Board and School Committee chairs will likely fall in the third week of October, but no date has been set, and because the session involves no quorum and takes no votes, it may not be an open meeting. Knight said the town administrator would probably present it.
