Auditor’s report accepted

Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter

 

Darren Adamson with Young Parkyn McNabb LLP presented the auditor’s report to town council April 15. He presented the highlights from the report, and stated that it was a clean audit.
Some of the highlights could be found in financial assets, which are cash and assets that will be converted into cash; they totaled $25,193,000, which is up slightly from last years $24.5 million.
“Significant changes are cash is down a little bit, but investments are up more than that amount so some cash has been taken from short term investments or cash input into long term investments,” said Adamson. “Additionally some cash has been used to pay off long term debt, and some has been invested in capital assets.”
Financial assets are up slightly, mostly because investments are up. Liabilities total about $18.1 million compared to last year’s $20.4 million. Adamson said the biggest reason for that is the long-term debt repayment which totaled about $4.2 million for the year.
When you take the financial assets and subtract liabilities you get net financial assets, which was a little over $7 million. Adamson said that’s one of the indicators of the town’s financial position, it’s a good improvement over the prior year.
Non-financial assets, which is largely tangible capital assets – infrastructure owned by the town – has gone down slightly from last year. The town did invest $1.5 million in new capital assets over the year, but amortized approximately $4.1 million overall.
The total accumulated surplus is $183,028,002. The breakdown of that figure shows that $165 million is invested in tangible capital assets, money already spent and invested in infrastructure, and the remainder is available for future spending, approximately $18 million. $8.3 million of that is unrestricted and can be used towards the greatest need, and a little over $10 million has been set aside in specific reserves for operating and capital needs for the town.
The draft of the full auditor’s report, which was accepted and signed, can be found on Page 5.