The Finance Committee met 07/08/2024 and received a presentation on the 2023 audit and executive summary. The 2023 audit was performed by CliftonLarsenAllen, LLP, the company that has performed it for the last few years, and the presentation was given by Leah Lasecki a Principal and CPA with that firm who has presented to the Finance Committee on past audits.
I have prepared a transcript with Power Point slides of the presentation for download:
The presentation took around 20 minutes, but was very straightforward. Ms. Lasecki described the audit thusly, “[O]ur overall objective as auditors is to provide an opinion on the fair presentation of your financial statements. Okay? We’re not reconciling your accounting records, okay? We’re not doing any of that kind of stuff at all. We’re really in to be an auditor and to review what the city has already done.”
She reported that the city was given an unmodified or “clean” audit. Additionally, CliftonLarsenAllen did not identify any deficiencies in internal controls over financial reporting.
In addition to the primary audit they performed of the city, CliftonLarsenAllen also performed a secondary audit of three major federal programs—the Federal Transit Cluster, Covid 19 programs including American Recovery Plan Act funds, and public health. They found no issues that needed to be reported. She described this as “absolutely fantastic,” explaining, “there are so many compliance requirements of these grants. There’s so many places that you can get hung up and go wrong. Okay. But we’re very happy that there were no exceptions, no findings whatsoever this year.”
She spoke very highly of the city’s Finance Department and of the work of Finance Director Jeri Ohman, particularly in terms of how they make sure that they are in compliance regarding grants. She mentioned that it was imperative that the city continued to be diligent in that manner for the $25 million RAISE grant Valley Transit had received to fund the construction of a new transit center.
She noted that new regulations would require the city to change how it reports compensated absences for employees in the future, but that did not seem to be an issue for this specific audit.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1196033&GUID=AF498AB7-3475-4476-BB95-9795AB637391
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