Nov. 04--A south suburban school board president last month pointed to the results of a phone service audit and claimed the district had found a way to save thousands of dollars per year.
Board President Joe La Margo touted Orland School District 135 as fiscally responsible and "creative" in keeping costs low to taxpayers. "We're looking at everything," he said.
But after follow-up questions and an open records request from the Tribune, the Orland Park district acknowledged it had needlessly spent $81,000 because it hired a new phone service provider and forgot to cancel the old one for more than a year.
Most of the savings to the taxpayer will come from fixing the mistake and simply canceling the old service, not through creative belt-tightening.
The district caught the error only after hiring an auditor, The SpyGlass Group, to study its phone systems for potential savings. Finance director Carl Forn said officials had not noticed any problems with the phone bill and expected to find nothing amiss.
The auditor told the district that it was spending $147,000 annually on unused phone lines. The district took a look and, after keeping lines that may see little use but are still needed, such as those used in school security systems or for controlling heating, ventilation and air conditioning, it reduced the total of possible savings by almost half.
But Forn said the district still expects to save $75,000 per year going forward.
In reviewing the auditor's findings, the district discovered it was still paying for service from its old provider, AT, more than a year after it had switched to its new provider, Call One, in March 2013.
"But for contacting SpyGlass, we probably would still be paying AT," Forn said.
About five months of overlap between the new and old phone providers were intentional, Forn said. District employees were reluctant to cut off service from AT before getting comfortable with Call One, he said. But after the planned overlap period ended, the district kept paying needlessly for months, a move that was "probably not intentional," he said.
According to Forn, who joined the district in February, it appeared district employees "on the front lines" thought all the old phone lines were still needed and submitted the bills for approval, and the district officials who signed off on the decision to pay didn't question them.
He said it wasn't surprising new administrators unaware of the change in service provider didn't know from the information on the bills that the numbers listed represented phone lines that weren't actually being used.
"They get the approval of the principal, the district office, and then it comes to me. If I see all the approvals are all there, I cut the check," Forn said. "If there's a change in providers, I have to hear about it."
At a meeting last week, the District 135 school board approved paying The SpyGlass Group $64,650 for the audit. Forn said he's now working with the auditor to attempt to recover what they mistakenly paid AT and added that a financial software update should tighten the district's internal controls.
La Margo said this week that the decision to hire the auditor was still good fiscal policy that allowed them to catch the wasteful expenditures.
"Sometimes, the unfortunate thing when you give the direction to look at savings is you do uncover things you shouldn't have been paying for," he said.
lzumbach@tribune.com
Twitter @laurenzumbach
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