[read complete report – pdf] [read complete 2022 report – pdf]

Purpose of Review

The purpose of our review was to assess the City of Fulton’s (City) progress, as of June 2025, in implementing our recommendations in the audit report City of Fulton – Capital Projects (2021M-184), released in February 2022.

The audit determined that City officials were unable to readily determine the complete financial history and position of individual projects or determine the correct capital project fund balance because:

• The Chamberlain did not maintain complete, up-to-date capital projects records for each project.
• The Council did not approve capital projects budgets, monitor their financial results, or approve the close-out of projects.
• City officials did not properly close out 279 of 308 capital projects. The records included completed projects that date back to 1987.
  • 218 of these projects had residual cash balances totaling $967,711.
  • 21 projects ended with deficits totaling $95,177 that require additional funding.

The audit included 12 recommendations to help City officials properly manage capital projects.

Background

The City is located in Oswego County. The City is governed by an elected seven-member Common Council (Council) comprising the Mayor and six Councilors. The Mayor is the City’s chief executive officer. The Chamberlain is the City Clerk and the chief fiscal officer responsible for maintaining the City’s financial records including capital projects.

Results of Review

Based on our limited procedures, the City has made minimal progress implementing corrective action. Of the 12 audit recommendations, one recommendation was fully implemented, two recommendations were partially implemented and eight recommendations were not implemented. We could not determine the implementation status for the remaining recommendation because certain capital projects records were unavailable or inadequate.