MANCHESTER — Nearly $30,000 in mooring fees reportedly never reached the town in 2007 and 2008, according to a report submitted last year by the town's then-Harbor Advisory Committee.
But at least some of that money — initially thought to have never been billed by the town in a massive mix-up over moorings records — was collected from mooring holders, according to check records obtained by The Gloucester Daily Times.
Faulty records were cited in 2010 as the reason why $15,000 in expected revenue from slip mooring fees was not collected in 2007 or 2008.
But canceled checks endorsed by the town confirm that at least one slip mooring holder did pay his bill.
Thomas Sabin has kept a boat in Manchester since 1979 and currently keeps his 40-foot sailboat, the Acion, at Crocker's Boat Yard.
Sabin, who lives in Waban, brought the Acion to Manchester in 1985, but he is not listed as a mooring holder in harbor records from 2005 to 2008, despite the fact that he both moored his boat at the same slip and paid his fees for those years.
Sabin kept the canceled checks from his mooring fees from 2005 through 2008, and the checks are clearly endorsed with a stamp that reads "Town of Manchester by the Sea." Sabin paid the town $220 each year, but the town has no record of the payment.
According to town treasurer/collector Jennifer Yaskell, though financial records are kept for yearly audits, those records are not required to be kept after the audits are complete. Yaskell said she attempted to find the records of Sabin's payments, but was unable to do so.
"There are no treasurer's receipts going back that far," said Yaskell, who took over the Manchester treasurer/collector post in September.
The bank the town uses for its accounts has been sold twice since 2010, first to Danversbank and then to People's United Bank. The changeovers mean it is nearly impossible to trace individual transactions to find out where the checks were deposited.
Sabin said he was surprised the town had no record of his payments from 2005 to 2008, nor those of more than 100 other slip mooring holders.
"It struck me as something irregular going on," said Sabin, a neurologist at Tufts Medical Center.
Police Chief Glenn McKiel, who also served as harbormaster from 2007 to the summer of 2011 — after a Town Meeting vote in May created a position of full-time harbormaster and removed harbor management out from under the umbrella of the Police Department — has told the selectmen and the Harbor Advisory panel that slip mooring holders were not billed for 2006 or 2007 because of confusion about the way records were kept. He also said that the records could not be effectively reconstructed. Former police Chief Ronald Ramos had also served as harbormaster during the 2006-2007 time frame.
McKiel did not return calls for comment for this story. Town Administrator Wayne Melville refused to comment.
Harbor records have been notoriously haphazard, with mooring holders not listed in the proper places, moorings that went unassigned and moorings simultaneously assigned to more than one person, according to 2010 Harbor Advisory Committee claims. The Harbor Advisory Committee obtained harbor records that showed discrepancies between the money collected by the harbormaster and the money turned over to the town, beyond the money from slip moorings.
"People were paying in cash; the stuff wasn't getting recorded," said Skip Crocker, owner of Crocker's Boat Yard. "Anything I send downtown, we photocopy the checks, photocopy the paperwork."
Following up the Town Meeting vote, the town has hired a new full-time harbormaster to head up Manchester's harbor management in the new year. Bion Pike, who has been serving as harbormaster in Kittery, Maine, is slated to take over the Manchester position Jan. 15.
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