Representatives from the State Auditor’s Office stopped in Perry Monday night to review the City’s annual audit report and overall, officials say it went well.

City Administrator Butch Niebuhr says when the auditors look at the balances, it’s not always exactly how much the City has available.

“It always happens.  We spend a lot of time with what I’ll call it grant money, but it’s funds that we go after through the (Federal Aviation Administration) or the (Department of Transportation) or whatever.  So it never fails that there’s a funding lag.  We either have the money on hand so it looks like we have more money than we should have, or we don’t have the money and we’re waiting to get it because you have to spend it to get it.  This year it kind of showed that we had a lot of money on hand because we sold the bond so we had some extra money but that money is already allocated to projects that just haven’t happened yet” says Niebuhr.

Other notes on the audit talk about the few people that touch the City’s finances and the lack of financial information from a separate entity.

“Other than that, you know, same old stuff on the audit like separation of duties.  We just don’t have a lot of people at City Hall.  There’s only three of us up there that look over those funds so we try and get Council and other people to look over our shoulder as we’re handling the citizen’s funds and making sure that we’re doing everything right.  The other thing that came up was the (Perry Public) Library Foundation, which gave us, they don’t call it a qualified audit anymore, but it’s just a comment that they make in the audit that they weren’t able to audit that group.”

Overall, Niebuhr says it wasn’t a bad audit.  The City continues to show a positive balance in the general fund, which wasn’t always the case.  He also stated how much they appreciate the state’s help with completing the audit for the City.