MONTICELLO – An annual audit of how Sullivan County manages its money turned up no major issues. Auditors from the Buffalo-area firm of Drescher and Malecki LLP presented their report during Thursday’s meeting of the County Legislature’s Management and Budget Committee.
Matthew Montalbo said Sullivan officials have done well with unpredictables, including a fluctuating sales tax return and, in particular, state mandates. That’s an issue plaguing every county.
Montalbo did have one caution, noting the county’s current unappropriated fund balance is just below the state-recommended cushion of two months of the county’s annual budget.
“You’ve done a good job of managing what cards you’ve had to play,” Montalbo said. “You’ve assigned the funds, the one-time funds, and you’ve been able to kind of lessen that burden the last years. But, I would just caution going forward, you don’t want to start to see that trend to get closer to the one ratio and fell to a level where you have that minimum two months of operating.”
Management and Budget Chairman Scott Samuelson was pleased with what he heard.
“I think it was, it’s in very good shape but I also liked the warnings that they gave, that we need to just keep our eyes on where we’re going in the future,” Samuelson said.
There was no argument from county Treasurer Nancy Buck.
“I think it was a very good audit,” Buck said. As our auditors had mentioned, sometimes we, this year it showed that the expenses were higher than the revenues but that was only because of the two-year trend that we had when we had the extra funds that had come in a couple of years ago.”
With 2020 budget preparation already underway, Buck said a top priority will be to put things right side up with revenue exceeding expenditures.
