Brooksville CRA accepts FY2023 draft audit, approves FY2024 audit work and reviews HB 7013 compliance outline

The Brooksville Community Redevelopment Agency accepted a draft audit for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2023, approved a statement of work to begin the fiscal-year-2024 audit and reviewed an outline intended to comply with HB 7013, board members said during the CRA portion of the council meeting.

Audit presenter Julie Fowler of CliftonLarsonAllen told the board the firm issued an unmodified opinion on the FY2023 financial statements and highlighted a trend of increasing CRA revenues after removing a one-time water-tower sale. Fowler said the auditors reported an overexpenditure in the CRA’s general operating category but that total spending remained within the CRA’s overall budget.

Fowler said, “we have issued an unmodified opinion,” and added auditors “do have to report that in this report that you were over expended in that operating category.” The board moved and approved acceptance of the draft audit by voice vote; the transcript does not record a numerical roll-call tally.

Autumn Sullivan, the city’s finance director, presented a statement of work to begin field work and the examination for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2024. “What you have in front of you is just an approval of a statement of work so that we can get started on the field work and examination of fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2024,” Sullivan said. The board voted to approve the statement of work; the vote was recorded by voice and no roll-call count is shown in the transcript.

The board also reviewed a draft outline the city will use to satisfy reporting requirements under HB 7013. Mr. Haley, speaking to the board, described the new report as largely narrative and warned the CRA will likely have negative answers for some statutory benchmarks because the redevelopment area contains few residential parcels.

He told the board, “we're gonna have some no's in here because our areas have very few residential areas in it. So we don't have an ability to attract a lot of affordable housing into the CRA right now.” Haley said lack of planned residential development and current sewer capacity make promoting housing in the CRA problematic. He said he expects to return to the board with a near-complete draft in the middle of the year and noted the statutory deadline is Dec. 1, 2025.

Haley also provided project updates: the county has signed an interlocal agreement for a South Brooksville CRA and a CRA steering-committee meeting is scheduled with a consultant proposal under consideration. On a separate topic tied to the CRA budget, Haley described a new, lit City Hall sign funded from the CRA budget that will replace the existing white-and-black sign; he said installation was expected in the coming month and that the sign will include “Brooksville” if the council agrees.

Discussion and decisions were recorded separately in the meeting: the audit acceptance and the FY2024 audit statement of work were formal motions that passed by voice vote; the HB 7013 outline review was informational and the board requested Haley return with a near-complete draft at a later meeting. The transcript records no formal roll-call vote counts for the motions.

The CRA’s next steps include issuance of the complete FY2023 financial statements (the presenter said the summary was drawn from those statements and the complete documents were expected later in the week), starting field work on the FY2024 audit under the approved statement of work, and continued work on the HB 7013 narrative report to be returned to the board ahead of the Dec. 1, 2025 deadline.

Actions at the meeting were limited to accepting the FY2023 draft audit and approving the FY2024 audit statement of work; other items were informational updates and scheduling of follow-up work.