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Universal City council accepts FY 2024 audit; auditors give unmodified opinion
Summary
External auditors presented the FY2024 annual financial report and issued an unmodified opinion; the council voted to accept the audit after questions about accounting presentation and transfers were answered.
Universal City’s external auditors presented the fiscal year 2024 financial report at the Feb. 18 council meeting and issued an unmodified (clean) opinion; the City Council voted to accept the audit.
Selena Jones, senior audit manager for the auditing firm (ABIP), and partner Janet Pittman summarized the audit. Jones said the auditors followed generally accepted auditing standards, government auditing standards and uniform guidance and that their independent-auditor opinion was unmodified. She described the audit’s components — management’s discussion and analysis, government-wide financial statements, notes, supplementary information and a compliance section that included testing of federal grants.
Jones highlighted several financial figures from the draft report: the city reported total fund balance of approximately $30.5 million at Sept. 30, 2024; an unassigned fund balance of about $17.2 million (mostly in the general fund); and operating reserves described by staff as roughly 13 months of operating expenses when capital outlay is excluded. She said total revenue for the year was about $26 million, an increase driven by a mix of sales-tax, ad valorem and investment-earning changes. Jones said audit compliance work produced no material weaknesses or findings related to federal uniform-guidance expenditures.
Council members asked questions about a transfer of venue-tax revenue to the general fund; auditors and staff said a draft-versus-final reporting difference had been corrected in the final statements so the expected $550,000 transfer appears as recorded. Council members also asked about pensions and how actuarial valuations affect long-term liabilities; auditors said pension and OPEB information comes from the administering organizations and actuarial assumptions change annually.
After the presentation, a councilmember moved to accept the audit and the motion passed by voice vote. No material audit findings were reported in the auditors’ letters provided to council.
The auditors offered to meet individually with council members to review the audit in lay terms; staff said the report includes schedules and notes councilors can reference for detailed fund-by-fund information.
