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During the LaGrange City Council meeting held on March 25, the council voted to accept the FY 2023-2024 Financial Audit Report.

The independent comprehensive financial report was prepared by Mauldin & Jenkins and showed the city is still in good standing.

City Manager Patrick Bowie went over the report during the council’s morning work session. The report covers the year before he took over as city manager, covering July 2023 to June 2024.

Patrick said the report showed that the city increased its net position, essentially assets over liabilities, in both the city’s governmental activities and its business accounts. 

“Business type activities are things like our electric department, our gas, our water, our sewer, telecom, even Sweetland is considered business type activity,” Bowie said.

The city’s governmental net position increased from $83,316,000 to $87,603,000 from FY23 to FY24. Similarly, the city’s business-type net position increased from $133,155,000 to $142,846,000 from FY23 to FY24.

Governmental activities increased the net position by approximately $4,142,000 during the fiscal year. This compares to approximately $7,898,000 in the prior fiscal year. 

“The significant increase in net position from fiscal year 2020 through fiscal year 2024 is in part due to the recognition of CARES/ARPA funding of approximately $10.6 million, a rapid increase in sales taxes and fees as consumer spending jumped in response to COVID stimulus payments, and over $2 million per year in increased utility transfers,” Mauldin & Jenkins said in the report. 

The City of LaGrange subsidizes its government operations with utility transfers to avoid collecting a property tax. 

“Governmental funds were about negative $11 million, and we make that up through our transfers from our utility fund. So that’s how we fund a lot of what we do in the general government,” Bowie said. “About $15 million was transferred over into the general fund from the utility funds.”

“[In 2023,] we got ARPA money, which was about $10.6 million, plus all the stimulus spending that was done by all the consumers as they were getting stimulus checks and buying TVs and cars and everything else. We also had some increase in utility funds, so we were able to increase and get the general fund back to where it needed to be. Now, the reserves are about 29% at the end of the fiscal year of expenses. We try to be about 25%, but that number is starting to tilt back because all the stimulus money is gone. ARPA is not there anymore.”

The largest source of revenue for governmental activities in the fiscal year 2024 was taxes (including sales, insurance, franchise and others), which totaled approximately $19,775,000.

Transfers from various enterprise funds, including Water, Sewer, Electric and Gas, which totaled approximately $15,457,000, represented the second largest source of governmental funding at 27.6% of governmental activities revenues.

The remainder of available funding came from grants and contributions, charges for services, interest earnings, and other miscellaneous sources.

The full financial report is available at https://ted.cviog.uga.edu/financial-documents/node/483.