Buda council receives unmodified, clean opinion audit

BUDA — At its April 17 meeting, Buda City Council was presented with the audit of the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2022, which ended Sept. 30, 2022.

Buda Finance Director Bianca Redmon started by announcing that Buda City Council received an “unmodified, clean opinion” on the city’s financial statements.

Redmon explained the audit process, which began in June 2022 when audit provider Weaver and Tidwell, LLP visited Buda to perform an interim audit, providing a “head start” on the FY audit.  In early January 2023, the audit team started approximately one month of onsite “field work testing.” After two meetings with the audit committee held in January and April 2023, a final report was created to present to council.

The responsibility of the auditing company includes:

• To express an opinion(s) about whether the financial statements that have been prepared by management are fairly presented in all material respects in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

• To plan and perform audit to obtain reasonable, rather than absolute, assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement.

• To consider internal control as a basis for designing audit procedures.

• To provide findings, if any, regarding significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in internal control over reporting or compliance.

“If you remember, last year, we did have what you call significant deficiency, just because it took a long time for the books to be complete and finalized,” Rebecca Goldstein, partner at Weaver and Tidwell, L.L.P, said. “We were auditing during that time and we had a lot of adjustments.”

According to prior year records, “The original general ledger for the fiscal year 2021 was provided to the audit team on or around December 29, 2021; however, there were approximately 37 adjustments and reclassifications that were subsequently posted by city management, including multiple entries related to fixed assets, utility account receivables and allowance and other miscellaneous entries. The delays in posting these adjustments caused setbacks in reporting and inefficiencies in the performance of the audit since the trial balance was not finalized until approximately February 25, 2022.”

It further states that a corrective action plan was implemented and Goldstein confirmed “that was better this year. We don’t have that significant deficiency, so that’s great news right there.”

According to Goldstein’s presentation, the following results were recorded:

• Significant risks identified- no findings. This item includes looking at risks such as posting of manual journal entries, management override of internal controls, improper disbursements, unauthorized payrates, improper or unauthorized expenditures and manipulation or adjustments of utility pay rates.

• Qualitative aspects of significant accounting policies. The report found no new significant accounting policies, unexpected significant accounting estimates and no new significant financial disclosures.

Additionally, there we no significant difficulties encountered during the auditing process, no material uncorrected misstatements, no material misstatements that required correction, no disagreements with management and no other significant matters, findings or issues.

“I want to recognize that Bianca, this was your first full year of control, under your leadership. I think about finance and picture the folks in the back room that aren’t out in front very often, but finance touches every single department. And you are responsible for every aspect of every dollar that comes through this building and impacts all those departments,” council member Matt Smith said. “It’s a huge undertaking. And through the transition from our prior finance director and then, now completely under your control and, again, just having that clean opinion, no modifications mentioned, is just a tribute to your leadership and your commitment to delivering exceptional financial services throughout the city. I just highly appreciate it, thank you very much.”

Mayor Lee Urbanovsky and City Manager Micah Grau also expressed appreciation for Redmon and the rest of the Finance Department for their hard work throughout the audit process.

The full Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for FY 2022 is available on the city of Buda website at www.budatx.gov/745/Annual-Financial-Audit-Report.