If there’s one thing good financial administrators and accountants can be depended on to do, it is to tell it like it is. Massaging the message and sugar-coating the math doesn’t happen, because the numbers are the numbers and can’t be denied.

That’s more or less the approach Berlin Finance Director Natalie Saleh took last week, when she advised the mayor and Town Council that they should begin to rebuild the town’s woefully insufficient water and sewer reserve funds by imposing new fees in April.

Two months is no time at all in the governmental scheme of things, but that’s how worried Saleh and consultant Jean Holloway are that these continuing shortfalls could become critical if not tended to quickly.

Holloway, whose services are being provided through the Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project Inc., told town officials in the bluntest of terms that if these utilities don’t start pulling their fiscal weights, the town’s ability to obtain funding or a loan will be in serious jeopardy if fast financing is needed to undertake urgent repairs or projects.

The mayor and council, however, did the verbal equivalent of shifting uneasily in their seats because they know that no matter how or when they proceed it isn’t going to be popular with residents and businesses.

That said, residents and business people need to acknowledge that Holloway and Saleh know what they’re talking about and that the pain of filling these fiscal sinkholes will only get worse the longer remedial action is delayed.

Assessing constituents’ opinions on how they feel about the situation is appropriate as long as the deliverers of this bad news also explain the dire nature of the circumstances and the ramifications of doing nothing.

Although the current crop of officials might not have created this problem, they nevertheless signed on to fix it and whatever else might come their way during their terms. As uncomfortable and unpopular as it may be to have to revive these failing funds, there’s just no getting around it.