JONESBORO — In its Monday, July 10 meeting, the Jonesboro City Council heard a report on its 2022 audit.
According to the audit by the Fulton & Kozak firm, at the end of last year, the city had a fund balance of $6.2 million — about $6 million of which can be used without restrictions.
In a recommendation to the City Council, Dan Soles, of Fulton & Kozak, said the city has to be careful in spending its fund balance.
“It’s there, but you don’t want to dig into that for things like day-to-day operation,” he said. “The fund balance is there for big projects that you have going on.”
If the city has to use its fund balance, Soles said it’s better to spend the restricted fund balance first. He said in some cases, other governments have spent the unrestricted fund balance first but then can only use the restricted fund balance for specific purposes.
“Jonesboro doesn’t have that problem right now,” he said.
In other findings, Soles said there were some issues with journal entries but there had been “huge improvement” in that area.
He also said there was an issue with SPLOST money and that SPLOST money can only be spent from the SPLOST fund. SPLOST money cannot be moved over to the general fund.
“I don’t think that’s going to be an issue going forward,” he said.
The Fulton & Kozak firm gave a “clean” opinion of the city in the report, which found the city had nearly $28 million more in assets than in liabilities as of Dec. 31, 2022.
“Even with the spending that went into the new building (Jonesboro City Center), the staff did a great job staying on top of the spending and making sure it didn’t get out of hand for the year,” Dole said.
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