External auditor gives Franklin City a clean opinion on FY2025 finances

Crossland e LLC presented its annual audit of Franklin City’s fiscal year 2025 financial statements on Dec. 9, delivering an unmodified (clean) opinion and reporting no audit findings for the city or for audited federal programs.

Jennifer, the audit principal from Crossland e LLC, told the Budget Finance Committee the firm performed the audit under Government Auditing Standards (the “Yellow Book”) and the federal Uniform Guidance. She said the firm issued a clean opinion on the government-wide and fund financial statements and provided unmodified opinions on audited schedules, including the schedule of expenditures of federal awards. The auditor described the city as a low-risk auditee for federal testing based on its history of clean audits.

The auditor highlighted several items in the annual comprehensive financial report. Notable figures presented included a $43,000,000 bond issuance recorded in governmental activities during FY25 and $214,000 in new software leases recorded under SBITA. The city’s pension and OPEB estimates were described as the most sensitive accounting estimates; the auditor said the city uses a qualified actuary and that the pension plan’s funded percentage was about 67% for the closed city plan, while the state-managed TCRS plan showed about 93% funded status. The audit principal also noted the city contributed slightly more than the actuary’s recommendation to the closed plan in 2025.

Jennifer told the committee that auditors found no internal-control findings in the financial statement audit and no compliance findings for the two major federal programs tested (the federal transit cluster and American Rescue Plan Act funds). She updated the committee on an accounts-payable fraud matter reported in a prior year: management put additional internal controls in place after the event and the auditor said the corrective actions addressed the previous finding.

Committee members praised staff and the auditors for the clean report. The committee served as the audit committee during the presentation; no formal vote on the audit opinion was recorded beyond accepting the report into the meeting record. The committee asked staff to continue monitoring the pension funding status and other long‑term liabilities as part of ongoing financial oversight.

The city’s auditors encouraged committee members to read the management discussion and analysis and the footnotes for context on capital projects, liabilities and sensitive accounting estimates.