The Finance Committee met 08/25/2025. During that meeting they received a presentation about the city’s 2024 audit by Leah Lasecki an account with CliftonLarsonAllen, LLP, the company which conducted the audit. The audit came back “clean” meaning the city’s financial statements were fairly stated in all material respect and free from material misstatement. Additionally, CLA determined that there were no deficiencies in internal control over financial reporting.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
Ms. Lasecki has participated in the city’s annual audit for the last 6 years and has been the signing principal for 3 of those years. There had been turnover in the city’s Finance Department and there had been some concern that that would slow down the audit process, but it ended up going well and they were able to complete the audit only a week later than they did in 2023. Ms. Lasecki noted that because Appleton used the TylerMunis system, the audit team was able to do a lot of their work remotely.
CLA gave Appleton a clean audit opinion. Ms. Lasecki was not aware of any time that Appleton had received anything but a clean audit opinion.
CLA also did not find any deficiencies in Appleton’s internal controls over financial reporting. Ms. Lasecki noted that had city had even relatively minor deficiencies they would have needed to have been noted in the audit report. “You know, we test during the year and make sure that, as an example, that the bank reconciliation is reviewed and approved by somebody separate from who’s preparing it—correct? If that wasn’t done, that would rise to level of being here. Okay? So, it can be some pretty, seemingly minor things that can end up in this report. Okay? But again, there were no deficiencies whatsoever in internal control over financial reporting.”
In 2024, Appleton received about $17 million in federal funds and $3 million in state funds, not including shared revenue and entitlement grants. Most of those were grants that went toward public transit and public health. One of the things CLA has to do every year is review money the city received from federal and state programs. They do not test the same programs every year but instead test the programs that the government tells them they need to test and then cyclically review the other programs. This year they tested the funds the city received through the American Recovery Plan Act and the funds the city received through an Assistance to Firefighters Grant.
The Assistance To Firefighters Grant had consisted of $1.8 million that had been awarded to 18 local fire departments to go toward the purchase of replacement portable radios. Appleton had served as the host agency and distributed those funds among the other participating municipalities. Ms. Lasecki said that Appleton was the first municipality for which she had had to review that type of grant as part of the federal single audit. This was due to the large size of the funds. She said, “We spent a lot of time on that one because it had some really weird compliance requirements. So, it was kind of fun for our team to be able to test a new program that isn’t the same as what they’ve done before.”
On the state side, they tested Valley Transit’s operating aid. She indicated that they test transit almost every single year either on the federal side or the state side.
Across those three programs, they did not find any deficiencies in internal control over compliance. Ms. Lasecki told the committee, “There were also no separate federal or state compliance findings noted as well. That is a huge, huge thing for the city to not have any findings. Even the best clients that I have end up with findings, because there are so many compliance requirements in each one of those grants. So, it’s awesome, especially on this new one with the firefighters grant that you didn’t have any fight findings.”
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1314422&GUID=5A6B8519-97AC-4895-92AE-2C7EA2BA717A
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