Benton Harbor City Commissioners have heard the audit report for the fiscal year that ended in June. Speaking to the city commission Monday night, accountant Paul Matz with Rehmann Robson said the audit report is clean and unmodified, the best opinion the firm can issue.
“It’s clean from the accounting perspective,” Matz said. “So, we aren’t finding on the use of funds or what you purchased or anything in that regard, but those financial statements that you have in front of you, in our opinion, those are accurately stated financial statements.”
Matz said the city was able to add to its fund balance, or reserves, in the last year.
“For the general fund the very first numerical column, there an increase in fund balance for the year of $89,836, bringing the end of the year fund balance to $5,823,313.”
Matz said the report did make some recommendations to have policies in place for the management of federal funds, like the millions in ARPA dollars now coming in. He also said the firm asked last year for an explanation of $100,000 in city funds that were moved to the cemetery fund several years ago. City Manager Ellis Mitchell said those dollars were used to buy equipment. That was before Mitchell was city manager and the city was under state emergency management.
