City of Sharon 2022 Audit Close to Completion, Concerns Raised by ATA

Derek Barner with ATA spoke on the City’s 2022 audit. The audit had taken some time to complete, but Barner stated that it was almost finished after running into multiple obstacles along the way. “The entire staff that was on site in 2022 was completely turned over,” Barner stated as just one of the obstacles he encountered with the audit.

“It's not uncommon for a city to have one to two findings on an audit. For 2022, we compiled a list of deficiencies that we've noticed. Not all of them might be findings, but right now we're looking at about two dozen deficiencies that we've noticed. It was an excessive amount of items that happened because of lack of controls and things that the staff did or didn't do in most cases,” Barner explained.

Barner explained that he worked with the current staff to come up with balances that “are as close to accurate as possible, but not with certainty that they are correct.”

Due to the possible incorrections, the city of Sharon’s 2022 audit will come with a disclaimer of opinion issued.

“Just because there's information that we just couldn't obtain. And at the end of the day, we've just done our best to get it as close as we could with what information that we've had,” Barner stated.

Sharon Mayor Donna Stricklin stated that even though the city turned in their new budget on time, it cannot be approved due to not having a 2022 audit completed.

“Which means we’re in trouble because we have met the regulations other than if something bad was to happen to our town and we needed to go borrow money, we are unable to,” Stricklin stated.

The city is operating out of budget until the audit is completed.

Barner said that a draft should be ready in the next few weeks.