County receives clean FY24 audit, reports $97.8M year-end fund balance

Shanandra Usher, Albemarle County's assistant chief financial officer, presented the fiscal year 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report to the Board of Supervisors and highlighted a 2.6% positive revenue variance that staff estimated at about $10,500,000, driven largely by property tax assessment growth. Usher told the board the county ended the year with an approximate net change in fund balance of $6.5 million and a total fund balance of about $97.8 million.

Megan Argenbright, managing partner at Brown Edwards, delivered the external audit findings and told the board the auditors issued a "clean, unmodified opinion." Argenbright said the audit included federal compliance testing (including SLFRF/ARPA, child nutrition and the Medicaid cluster) and that the auditors identified no federal program findings for FY24. The presentation also referenced new GASB reporting lines implemented this year (GASB 87 and GASB 96), and staff explained that several line-item variances contributed to roughly $17.3 million in expenditure savings for the year.

Board members asked follow-up questions about the composition of the unassigned fund balance and differences between budgetary and audit presentations. Jacob Sumner, the county's chief financial officer, explained that the unassigned figure includes multiple components — policy reserves (including the county's 10% fund balance reserve and 2% budget stabilization reserve), reappropriations carried from FY24 to FY25, and amounts identified as use of fund balance when adopting the FY25 budget. Sumner noted staff will provide further detail as the board reviews the upcoming budget cycle.

Following the audit presentation and Q&A, the board approved a staff motion authorizing the chair and the county executive to execute a notarized statement certifying the audit report had been presented to the board, satisfying the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts submission requirement.