The city’s financial reporting got a clean bill of health Monday as the firm hired to audit the city’s books released its findings.
The report by KPMG highlights a few “significant risks” associated with “control deficiencies” detected within the city’s financial reporting practices but found overall that St. Albert is doing a good job with its financial reporting.
The deficiencies relate to mistakes in the way the city listed tangible capital assets like bridges and sidewalks. The city inadvertently excluded from its books $3.9 million worth of bridges in the annexed area. It also failed to record $178,000 worth of new sidewalks.
The city has corrected its financial statements to reflect the bridge values and has agreed to correct the sidewalk values in the 2011 fiscal year, the report states.
The document also notes a few timing problems related to the city’s recording of grant transfers from other levels of government.
Apart from the recording of asset values, the findings are typical for a municipality, said Arnold Follinglo, a partner with KPMG, the firm that performed the audit of St. Albert’s books.
He noted that the results are particularly impressive given that national accounting standards changed two years ago.
“It’s been quite a challenge for all municipalities,” Follinglo said, adding that St. Albert is doing “quite well” at adapting to the new rules.
Coun. Cam MacKay, who specialized in accounting when earning a business degree, thought the city did very well.
“In the past two years municipalities have had to make a dramatic change in how they do business and we came out of there with relatively few deficiencies,” he said. “I thought that spoke pretty well of our accounting staff and how they put together our books.”
The findings are very typical for St. Albert, said Coun. Roger Lemieux.
“Of the four years I’ve been on council it’s been the same every year,” he said. “It’s accounting procedures that get tweaked once in a while. It doesn’t scare me off at all.”
The audit recommendations are public for the first time this year because of a new policy that council adopted in February. Going public with the information was an idea that Mayor Nolan Crouse pushed in an effort to improve transparency.
Crouse reacted to the latest audit by saying it was among the cleanest he’s seen in a career that has exposed him to more than 50 audits.
“This is one of the reasons why these things, in my opinion, need to be public,” he said. “Every one of them is an outstanding report of due diligence by our staff.
“You almost can’t get a better audit.”
