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Audit Objective

Determine if officials effectively managed the District’s general fund balance.

Key Findings

• The District’s unrestricted fund balance at the end of 2016-17 was almost $1.83 million or 15.25 percent of the ensuing year’s budgeted appropriations, exceeding the statutory limit by 11.25 percentage points.
• The budgets overestimated appropriations by more than $2.03 million or 6 percent from 2015-16 through 2017-18.

Key Recommendations

• Ensure that the District’s fund balance is in compliance with statutory limits and use surplus funds as a financing source to fund one-time expenditures and needed reserves or reduce District property taxes.
• Adopt realistic annual budgets based on historical or other known trends.

District officials generally agreed with our recommendations and have initiated, or indicated they planned to initiate, corrective action.