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Finance committee recommends 2024 budget amendments after audit finds several overspends
Summary
Finance staff detailed year-end budget cleanup tied to the completed audit and recommended council approve 2024 appropriations to reconcile overspending in several funds, including audit costs, fire personnel, debt service and civic celebrations.
The City Finance Committee recommended that the council adopt 2024 budget amendments after staff presented year-end reconciliations tied to the recently completed audit. Danielle (staff member) told the committee the audit is essentially complete and staff is proposing appropriations to match actual 2024 spending.
Danielle said the audit work identified several overspending items that need budget adjustments. "One of the largest ones that you'll see is the audit, which we overspent on by $42,000," she said. She also reported the fire personnel line exceeded budget by about $190,000 because of overtime, vacation payouts and severance. The debt service fund was overspent by roughly $125,000, the committee was told, because finalized debt payments were higher than the estimates used when the 2024 budget was adopted.
Other notable variances included the Civic Celebrations program, which Danielle said was over budget on personnel by about $25,000 and operationally by about $26,000, leaving a roughly $21,000 deficit in that fund for 2024. The solid waste operating line exceeded its expenditure budget by about $15,000 but, Danielle added, the fund received roughly $145,000 in additional revenue that covered that overspending.
Danielle explained the impact fee fund overspending reflected a cleanup of projects carried forward from prior years after internal review; the spending related to projects that had been eligible for impact fee financing but had not been recorded correctly in earlier transitions of finance staff. "I went back and cleaned up and went through all the projects," she said.
Committee members had no further changes and moved to recommend the council approve the proposed 2024 appropriations to reconcile governmental funds to actual spending. The motion passed on an affirmative voice vote of committee members present.
The committee also discussed audit timing and deliverables. Staff said auditors from Griffin, Larson, Allen would present the finalized audit at the August meeting and that certain statistical schedules and single-audit work (related to federal ARPA grants) remain in process. Danielle said two single audits — for 2022 and 2023 federal grant activity — must be completed because the grants exceeded the federal single-audit threshold.
Ending: The committee forwarded the recommended 2024 budget amendments and the finalized audit (when issued) to the council for formal action and asked auditors to appear at the August meeting with the final reports.
