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Fannin County 2025 audit returns clean opinion; reserves cover about a year of operations
Summary
An independent CPA told commissioners Fannin County received an unmodified audit opinion for 2025 and retains strong reserves despite a planned $0.85 million gap between revenues and expenditures tied to capital projects such as a new library and fire apparatus.
Justin Burrus, a CPA presenting the county's 2025 audit, told the Board of Commissioners that Rush(tin) (auditor firm) issued an unmodified opinion on Fannin County's 2025 financial statements. "We gave an unmodified opinion on the 2025 financials," Burrus said, describing the result as a "clean audit." He told the board the audit opinion, the internal-control report and the single-audit compliance letter make up the core deliverables presented to commissioners.
Burrus said Fannin County's governmentwide capital assets totaled about $59.0 million in 2025, restricted net position was about $32.0 million and unrestricted net position was about $40.7 million. He reported general-fund revenues of $31.8 million in 2025 and general-fund expenditures of approximately $35.6 million, a difference the presenter characterized as a planned drawdown reflecting large capital projects such as the new library and a pumper truck purchase.
On fund balance, Burrus said the county's unrestricted fund balance stood at $37.7 million at year-end, which he calculated would cover roughly 12.4 months of current spending at 2025 levels. He noted the industry "healthy" benchmark is typically three to six months and said Fannin County remains well above that standard.
Burrus described revenue drivers and year-over-year changes: intergovernmental revenues increased about $679,000 (including more than $2 million attributed to library grant receipts used on the library project), charges for services decreased roughly $247,000, local-option sales taxes increased about $218,000 and property tax revenue increased about $157,000. He also described the county's hotel-motel (lodging excise) tax, which the presenter said is 6 percent; roughly $3.44 million of that stream was noted as flowing to the general fund in 2025 to help subsidize county operations.
The audit presentation included eight internal-control recommendations documented in the auditors' letter; Burrus said the report lists those recommendations and the status of prior recommendations. On federal spending and the single-audit review, Burrus said the auditors did not identify material weaknesses related to the county's federal awards and had no compliance recommendations in that area.
After the presentation a commissioner moved and the board approved the audit presentation by voice vote. The board asked staff to follow up on the eight recommendations in the auditors' internal-control letter.
Next steps: commissioners accepted the auditor's report and directed county staff to review and address the internal-control recommendations outlined in the auditor's letter.
