State police are investigating after $88,000 went missing from New Alexandria’s coffers.

The probe comes after borough council in March fired Chuck Ferry from his role as secretary-treasurer.

Ferry could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the small municipality of about 400 people is tightening its belt as it copes with the hit to its limited finances.

That has included laying off a maintenance worker and obtaining a reduction in annual payments on a purchased truck, according to councilman Wayne Duffield.

“We’ve had to adjust for a lot of things financially,” he said. “We’ve been negotiating with some groups that we deal with to give them less money for the time being.”

Duffield said the borough hopes to recover at least some of the missing money through the company that bonded Ferry in his role as treasurer.

“There’s just not that amount of money available to us at this point,” Duffield said.

According to Duffield, financial irregularities came to light in January, after a check issued by the borough for partial payment of a paving contract bounced.

“We knew something was up and we started to investigate,” Duffield said. “The money we were told by our treasurer was in our account wasn’t in the account.”

New Alexandria officials discovered missing funds totaling about $88,000 by reviewing borough financial records dating back to about 2017, Duffield said.

“We’ve had a number of meetings to try to track things down,” he said.

State police indicated their investigation into the missing New Alexandria funds is just beginning and noted a related meeting is scheduled with the borough solicitor.

New Alexandria tax collector Carol Zdrojkowski was temporarily appointed to take on the duties of secretary-treasurer for the borough, Duffield said.

Ferry also was dismissed as the borough’s zoning/code enforcement officer. Mayor Tim Ruane is filling in in the code enforcement role, according to Duffield.

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