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09/05/2018 08:30 AMFrequent attendees at Board of Selectmen (BOS), Board of Finance (BOF), or Board of Education (BOE) meetings, particularly during budget season, will find the following scene familiar: An item regarding town or BOE finances comes up on the agenda, board members introduce the item, and then a board member inevitably turns to the woman siting in the audience surrounded by binders and notebooks and says something to the effect of, “and now Stacy is going to explain this to us.”
And she does. Every time. And in language those in the audience without a financial background can understand, which is no small task.
As director of finance, Stacy Nobitz is responsible for the finances of both the town and the BOE, everything from budgets to payroll to audits to something as simple as setting up a cash register. If it has a dollar sign attached, it’s going to cross Stacy’s desk.
With a degree in accounting from Quinnipiac College, which has since been renamed Quinnipiac University, Stacy started out as an auditor for a major accounting firm in the state, auditing various different industries before eventually deciding to specialize in municipalities. She became a certified public accountant (CPA) in 1996 and then found her way to Madison.
“I was a supervisor auditing municipalities including Guilford and Clinton and then a job in Madison opened up, so I figured I would be close to home,” she says.
Stacy first started working for the town back in 1997 as town accountant. In 2004 she left to go back to the same accounting firm to become an audit manager specializing in municipalities. Then in 2012, Madison approached her to come back as the finance director.
“Going back and forth helped me in both jobs, because when I went back to auditing, I had the municipal side in my head so I knew what clients were dealing with and I knew where they were coming from,” she says. “Then when I came back here, I knew what auditors were looking for, so it definitely helped me here to make sure the audit is smooth.”
As a result, when audit season roles around no one breaks a sweat.
“To me, I look forward to the audit because that’s my thing—that’s what I have done for half of my career and I look forward to all of that, which, yes, it’s a little dorky I know,” she says.
Making it All Work
Having one finance director for both the town and the BOE is an unusual model and one not used by neighboring towns. While that can add up to more meetings and more work for Stacy, at the end of the day she says the result is a more unified accounting system across the departments, greater accountability, and better communication practices.
“For me, I see everything all year round and I am kind of like the liaison between the boards, because if the BOF has a question about the BOE, I know the answer because I already know what is going on over there,” she says. “I think that helps the relationship between the boards, because I can tell you when I was an auditor we would joke about starting a therapy group to get the various towns and BOEs to work together and communicate. I think the shared services help here because there are no unanswered questions ever.”
As to how the department manages to stay on top of it all, Stacy is quick to shine the spotlight on her staff.
“I have great staff, I really do,” she said. “In our office we have two accounts payable, two payroll, and then basically two assistants between Cheryl Kuszpa and Kristen Bartosic, who are amazing and we just keep going…My management style is I don’t like to micromanage, but definitely my doors is open and people are in here constantly and if someone has an issue, I jump in.”
Members of the Finance Department are quick to say the office works because of Stacy’s leadership. In an office made up of working mothers—including Stacy, who has four children—staff members said Stacy does a good job of “understanding the importance of a work/life balance while creating a work environment that is both comfortable and effective,” according to Bartosic.
Awards and Additions
Madison has a good financial track record, so when Stacy took the job as director, she wanted to continue the successful practices already in place, but also help the town expand its thinking in some areas.
“Coming in here I had a vision to think differently and try to help the town think differently, because I think the towns get so caught up in this budget year and how are we going to keep the taxes down for this upcoming budget year, and that really bothered me,” she says. “I wanted to look forward at least five years to make sure that we can sustain it.”
Recent examples of her influence include the BOF’s five-year outlook and the new approach to smoothing out changes in debt service, but by far one of Stacy’s most notable contributions is the Capital Improvement Program (CIP), the town’s five-year capital planning program.
“There was no program that pulled all of these capital project funds together and looked out for a five-year period, so when I first came here the town engineer and myself pretty much developed the plan for the BOF,” she said. “That was a huge thing under my belt. It was very important to me and it wasn’t a new concept—other towns had this. We just weren’t looking that way.”
Stacy said she thanks the various boards for listening to “all these crazy ideas that I have,” but as elected officials change and boards shift over the years, current BOF Chair and former CIP Chair Jean Fitzgerald said Stacy’s knowledge and insight help keep everything running smoothly.
“Stacy is quite simply the nucleus of our town,” she says. “She helps guide the BOS, BOF, and BOE. She is trusted and respected and many times is the voice of reason and calm in turbulent situations.”
While Stacy says she can’t take credit for putting the town in the healthy financial position it’s in, she can take credit for adding a significant financial award to the town’s list of accolades. For fiscal years 2016 and 2017, the town was awarded the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting (CAFR) from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA). The town announced the receipt of the most recent award this July and Stacy said this is award reflects well on the town.
“We got our CAFR award, which was gone of my goals and I said it in my [hiring] interview that’s what I wanted to do,” she says. “It’s a big deal in my industry. We got it in 2016 and 2017 and now we will apply for the third year… The rating agencies are thrilled that we have it and that is definitely a plus and it shows that we are excellent in what we do.”
The award doesn’t mean Stacy now plans to sit back and relax. In addition to helping build budgets, prepping the audit, working on pension investments with advisors, keeping an eye on cash management, banking, maintaining involvement with numerous organizations like the GFOA, the CTGFOA, and the CSCPA, and serving as a resource for other towns and school districts, Stacy said already has her next goal in mind.
“My next goal is to receive the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award, also issued by the GFOA,” she says.