City of Lavonia Receives Clean Audit Report

The City of Lavonia has received a clean audit report for 2012.

During their regular meeting earlier this month, the Lavonia City Council heard from John Hollifield of Rushton  & Company on the results of their 2012 audit.

According to Hollifield, the City’s water revenues did not outpace expenses in 2012, which he said was mainly due to Parkdale Mills fabric plant on Gerrard Rd. closing in 2012.

“For the first time in five years our (water fund) expenses exceeded our revenues for 2012,” he said. “Going forward we would expect our expenses to go down a little, but until we can get an industry to come in and replace Parkdale, our revenues are not going to be at the level they were in prior years.”

City Manager Gary Fesperman said the loss of Parkdale Mills plant represented a $20,000 annual loss in water revenue for the city.

 

He said that was the one main area where expenses were high.

“We did a lot of capital improvements in the water fund this year,” he said. “We had a lot of good projects and replaced a lot of equipment. This year was sort of a catch up year for the water fund, but overall we had a pretty good year in 2012.”

Fesperman said the city’s General Fund revenue in 2012 was actually higher and he said revenues overall have been steady since 2008.

Hollifield concluded by saying there were no accounting changes or disputes with the city on any issue.