Alpharetta Auditors Give City's Financial Records a Clean Bill of Heath

Alpharetta's finances and financial record keeping got a clean bill of health from the city's auditors on Monday night. And the city will even have some "money in the bank" when City Council is looking to make some capital improvements in the next budget year.

Finance Director Tom Harris told council at that city auditors Mauldin and Jenkins CPAs issued a "clean opinion" on the financial statements.

The Finance Department issued the City of Alpharetta Comprehensive Annual Financial

Report for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2011.

General Fund highlights for the past fiscal year included:

• Property taxes down by $630,000 due to the continued decline in assessed values and the impact of the additional $5,000 homestead exemption.
• Operating expenditures up by $163K from the prior year primarily due to increased cost of healthcare, fuel, and utilities. Partially offset by vacant positions.
• Revenues of $48.6 million exceeded the amount budgeted by $2.8 million. $800K was due to building permits coming higher than expected. This led to more charges such as building plan review generating $431,000 more in revenues.
• Sales taxes came in $430k more than budget.
• Expenditures came in under budget, at $44.35 million leaving $2.1 appropriations unspent.
• Operating revenues exceeded operating expenditures by approximately $4.2 million.
• Unassigned Fund Balance amounts to $16.1 million. The $4.6 million balance remaining after covering the liability for post retirement health costs of $860K, and an emergency reserve amount of $10.6 million, can be used to fund one-time capital items in fiscal year 2013.