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The Southampton County Board of Supervisors received a report Dec. 17 on the county’s fiscal 2024 audit that revealed highly positive results.

Via live video, the audit presentation was made by Kimberly W. Jackson, a certified public accountant with Creedle, Jones and Associates PC, a medium-sized certified public accounting firm serving the state of Virginia and neighboring states.

Before Jackson spoke, Southampton County Administrator Brian S. Thrower summarized the audit and offered some remarks, referencing Deputy County Administrator and Chief Financial Officer Lynette C. Lowe.

“Very good audit, excellent audit,” he said. “I appreciate Lynette’s and department heads’ work on this. You can’t get any better audit than this. We’ve significantly increased fund balance, no material weaknesses. Everything’s done in proper order. So I thank Lynette and I thank our staff and departments and constitutional officers. Thanks to everybody.”

Near the beginning of the report, Jackson said, “Based on our audit procedures that we performed, an unmodified opinion, or clean opinion, was issued for the FY24 audit.”

She gave an overview of the different parts of the written report that had been submitted to the county, adding some additional details for some sections.

Following are excerpts from her presentation.

“The main operating fund of the county is the General Fund, which has an increase in fund balance of approximately $4.2 million for FY24,” she said. “The county’s total General Fund unassigned fund balance was $14.9 million (as of June 30, 2024,) which are the county’s funds that are not earmarked for special projects.”

She noted that total General Fund revenues increased approximately $1.3 million from the prior year.

“The county’s largest revenue source is property taxes at 61%, and intergovernmental revenues represent the second-largest at 22% of total revenues,” she said. “Property taxes increased approximately $2 million from the prior year which the total tax levy increased $3.5 million.”

She indicated that the 10-year trend was also included in the report.

“The General Fund expenditures also increased $1.8 million, with Community Development having the largest increase,” she said.

Next focusing on proprietary funds, she noted that the Enterprise Fund total net position decreased approximately $500,000. But then she applied some context.

“However, depreciation represents $1.2 million of expenditures, which is a non-cash transaction, so without depreciation, net position would have increased $650,000,” she said.

She mentioned that a section of the written report shows the county is in compliance with a legal debt margin at year end.

Jackson highlighted the part of the written report that shows the Southampton County School Board’s balance sheet, statement of revenues, expenditures and changes in fund balance, followed by its budget-to-actual schedules.

“The county contributed $12.6 million to the School Board during FY24,” she said.

Then she noted that the final section of the financials in the audit report is the compliance section. She said this section includes the auditor reports and opinions on internal control, compliance over major federal programs and compliance with the commonwealth of Virginia laws, regulations, contracts and grants.

“With relation to all of these, we only had one finding, which was a compliance in regard to one Social Services employee,” she said. “Access was not timely removed per the state specifications.”

She highlighted the page in the report featuring the county’s Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) that reports all federal funds expended during the fiscal year followed by the Schedule of Findings and Questioned Costs.

“The county received an unmodified, or clean, opinion in relation to major federal programs, with zero material weaknesses or significant deficiencies reported for the fiscal year,” she said. “So overall the county increased the fund balance, had no findings or significant deficiencies or material weaknesses and received a clean opinion for both the financials and the SEFA for the year.”

Jackson opened the floor to questions, and Southwest District Supervisor Lynda T. Updike said, “What percent of the budget is reviewed for an audit?”

“Materiality is done on a fund basis, and then samples are chosen and selected based on the material accounts, which is based on a calculation put out by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board,” Jackson said. “And then from those material accounts, samples are selected. And then in addition to that, it’s just an unpredictability test where we can select just samples from various accounts, and we switch those up year-to-year just to keep it fresh. So it’s not really a specific amount. Each fund is different based on its assets or revenues.”

The Board of Supervisors voted to accept the audit report.

Central District Supervisor and Board Chairman Dr. Alan W. Edwards asked for confirmation that the written report had just been given to supervisors that night.

Lowe said, “Last night. It was emailed to you by Mr. Thrower along with a synopsis of the audit.”

“So nobody has had a chance to look at it until tonight, is that right?” Edwards said.

Lowe said, “Right, so you may look at it and ask us questions at any time, or if you want to ask questions at the next board meeting, if you want to email me questions and then we go over them at the meeting, that’s fine.”

“OK,” Edwards said.