Middle Tennessee city recorder abruptly resigns amid financial woes: 'An absolute mess'

Millersville's finances are in shambles and the person who is most qualified to make sense of them submitted her resignation, effective immediately.

Holly Murphy, the city's recorder, sent the commissioners, interim city manager and city attorney a 1,700 word email Monday detailing payroll errors — including employees not getting paid or paid incorrectly — and several payments made from incorrect accounts.

Millersville sits about 15 miles north of Nashville, primarily in Sumner County, though a sliver of the city lies in Robertson County. The most recent population estimate, from July 2022, was a little more than 6,200, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Murphy served as Millersville's city recorder and finance director before her roles were recently split in two.

More: Millersville names police chief as interim city manager after months of turmoil

Earlier this year, she was placed on paid administrative leave amid a spate of firings in city leadership and was called in at least once during her leave to demonstrate how to handle the financials, according to comments made during public meetings.

She was scheduled to retire in a couple months after training a new finance director. Instead, the buildup of work, from her time on leave and since her return, became overwhelming, she wrote in her resignation.

"As I leave the position I've held for the last 27 years and eight months, I would be remiss if I didn't report to you the current state of the City's finances," she said. "They are an absolute mess. It's apparent that the lack of accounting knowledge, knowledge of our system and just not knowing what they don't know are contributing factors."

Murphy routinely works until 8 or 9 p.m. each night, she said.

"Utilities is a full-time job that requires full-time attention," she said. "Not everyone can do it. I have had very little time to spend with the new finance director and still have no knowledge of her credentials or accounting abilities."

The new finance director did not provide a report at Monday evening's work session, where Commissioner Cristina Templet asked pointed questions about the monthly reports.

Templet said January was comparable to December, but when she looked at February, the financials were not close to similar.

“Like, there’s no expenditures where we had workman’s comp and we had just little, little things on here, service repairs, different things, and it’s like that across the board," she said. “I don’t know what it is, but they just don’t seem to be correct. There’s just a lot of zeros here that don’t seem correct."

Murphy, in her resignation email, pointed out several issues with payroll.

Former employees who were let go or submitted their resignations have not yet been paid their accrued vacation at the end of their employment. Some employees were not getting paid correctly, or at all, Murphy said. Wages were under-reported to the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System and nearly $8,000 in taxes for 10 separate payrolls were either not called in, called in wrong or late to the Internal Revenue Service.

Murphy noted that the city "will be penalized by the IRS" for the inaccurate and lack of reporting.

Many of the city accounts were also mismanaged.

Several payments were duplicated, Murphy said, while other expenses were paid from the wrong accounts. In one instance, funds earmarked for street paving, over $344,000, were transferred from the street paving construction account to the general fund to pay a bond payment on City Hall, Murphy said.

"Another vendor was paid by check but then the same check number was used in another transaction, which is normally paid by draft," she said. "Sewer invoices are being paid from the street fund and general fund. Street fund expenses are being paid from the sewer fund. Solid waste expenses are being paid from the sewer fund."

With the mixup in payments, some were missed.

"The City has always paid its bills on time but is now receiving multiple calls from vendors asking when they can get paid," Murphy wrote.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Middle Tennessee town finances in turmoil; staffer abruptly quits