City of Live Oak receives a clean audit

Published 10:00 am Friday, May 12, 2017

LIVE OAK — The City of Live Oak received a clean audit at a city council meeting on Tuesday.

A clean audit means that the auditing company, Purvis Gray and Company, didn’t find any significant errors in the city’s books. This is a big step up from last year’s audit, said city staff.

Ryan Tucker, with Purvis Gray and Company, presented the audit to the city council and commended them on a making hard choices to put their books in order.

“This is one of the cleanest reports that you are going to find in the auditing world. I know you’ve had to make a lot of tough decisions, but I commend you for that,” Tucker said. “We think that those were necessary to bring the city back into a stronger financial position.”

Tucker said they have been recommending the city make these difficult decisions for the last couple of years. Since before 2011, the city has been taking money from its general fund to offset other areas of its budget, he said. Those practices could not continue and had to change.

Best practices for city government budgets is for the general fund to have at least two months worth of revenue in case of emergencies like Tropical Storm Debby. For Live Oak, the city should have $1.1 million in the general fund.

The general fund has $566,768 and increased by $321,000 since last year. Most of that money came from reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for Debby and doesn’t yet include money from some of the revenue increases the city has implemented.

Starting this year, the city has been clamping down on spending and raising taxes on utility bills and ad valorem taxes. These decisions have raised many concerns in the community, but the city has made it clear that it believes they were necessary.

Ron Williams, city manager, echoed Tuckers comments on commending the city council on the decisions they have made to bring the city’s books into order. He said a lot of the credit should also go to city staff.

“The point is that the city is heading in the right direction,” Williams said.