(12/13) At its December 7 meeting, the Emmitsburg Town Council was presented with the results of the town’s 2021 Fiscal year audit. The audit was approved and presented by Michele Mills and Addie Blickenstaff, of DeLeon and Stang CPAs and Advisors.

A first in many years, Emmitsburg’s audit was found to have misstatements for the fiscal year 2021 regarding payments and vendor information, according to Blickenstaff. One significant deficiency was discovered within the town’s internal controls over vendor payments.

The town’s accounting system utilizes a ‘resident’ vendor category to address any vendor that does not require a ‘full set up’, such as for one-time and miscellaneous payments to a resident, Blickenstaff said. This is done "in order to avoid a multitude of vendors within their accounting system who may never be used again," she said. The audit team searched for unrecorded liabilities and discovered two checks written to this category for the new town capital project.

The town’s accounting system was also discovered to have not been accurately storing vendor payment information, specifically for grant related projects, she said.

Material misstatements regarding the water fund and sewer funds, as well as corrections to the Bay Restoration fee were also found and corrected by the audit team.

The audit team recommended tracking vendor activity within the accounting system to ensure complete records for tax and reporting procedures. They also recommended that checks should also be printed with vendor name and address to avoid misappropriation and payments should not be requested and received by the same Town employee.

No material weaknesses in internal controls were identified and no transactions were entered by the Town that lacked authoritative guidance or consensus, Blickenstaff said.

For Fiscal Year 2021, the General Fund had revenues of $2,103,187 which was $233,120 above budget. The General Fund totaled $1,911,445 which had expenses $138,797 below budget, increasing the Town’s General Fund by $371,917.

The Water and Sewer Funds had revenues of $1,835,082 and expenses of $2,103,328, decreasing the Town’s Enterprise Funds by $268,246, according to Town Manager Cathy Willets.

As of June 2021, the town had $5.5 million in debt with no new debt borrowing. Payments of approximately $249,700 were made and two loans were paid off.

"Your debt doesn’t seem ridiculous for the town. We have several that have significantly more debt and we have some municipalities that have zero debt," she said.

Council President Tim O’Donnell acknowledged the hard work put into the audit all around and the ability to put the report in accessible terms for anyone to understand.

"It seems like we’ve gone a great distance from going from the original reports where they were a little more professional driven to layman driven [in readability], and that’s very much appreciated," he said.