The city of St. Joseph has received a clean, unmodified audit for the fiscal year that ended in June.
Auditor Jamie Wilkey with Lauterbach and Amen presented the latest financial findings to city commissioners this week. She said all went well working with Finance Director Ben Reynnells, with strong communication and a smooth process.
Wilkey said St. Joe finished the fiscal year with a slight decrease in the fund balance. She said not counting the enterprise funds, spending and revenue were about balanced.
“Total expenditures were $20.4 million,” Wilkey said. “If you recall in the last slide, revenues were $20.1 million. That’s where we get that very slight decrease and fund balance pretty typical spread here on the expenditure side.”
Wilkey said like most municipalities, public safety accounts for St. Joseph’s largest expenditure, followed by public works. She noted the city had a lot of major capital projects in the year.
“As I’ve indicated, the city continued capital asset investment throughout the year. All funds of the city totaled $20.2 million in new capital assets. So lots of projects happening, significant purchase of vehicles, many of those were backlogged, and pretty significant projects ongoing in the enterprise funds as well.”
Wilkey said the Marina Fund had a deficit, but Finance Director Reynnells said that was due to dredging and the fund will build back up in the near future with normal assets and operations.
Wilkey’s main recommendations were to keep a close eye on IT security and to build up the reserves, which now represent about 2.9 months of operations when most of her firm’s clients keep enough on hand to pay for three to six months of operations.
