FAITH — Faith received a clean opinion from their annual audit, the board of aldermen learned from a presentation given during its meeting on Tuesday.

One of the main indicators that auditors have pointed to has been the percentage of fund balance available compared to the annual expenditures. Faith is at 223 percent, which means that the town has enough liquid assets to cover the town’s expenditures, using last year’s budget, for approximately two years and three months. The average for towns of Faith’s size is 132 and the minimum required by the state is 71 percent.

The unassigned fund balance stood at $1,139,500 and the town spent a total of $520,400 during the last fiscal year. Auditor Eddie Carrick, who performed the audit of Faith, said that although the number seems large, it can be misleading, when asked if that was a good position to be in.

“You can have one major street repair and half of that will be gone. So that’s why I said that’s kind of a loaded question, because I don’t know that there’s a correct answer to that. The honest answer is, as a board, y’all are just going to have to look at that and say ‘here’s how much we feel like we need in reserve for things going forward,” said Carrick.

Carrick also noted that the town’s expenditures were down in 2023 even while its revenues were up. The total expenditures dropped from $649,000 in 2022 to $520,400 last year, while the revenues increased from $802,000 in 2022 to $821,000 in 2023.

That increase in the separation between expenditures and revenues could be attributed to multiple factors, Carrick said. The drop in expenditure could be explained by a decrease in the grant money the town is receiving, which functioned as expenditures. The increase in revenue was mostly due to $89,000 in American Rescue Plan Act the town received to put towards the new well.

Carrick said that the ad valorem tax, or property taxes, collection rate was at the average rate for towns of Faith’s size.
“Looking at is far as where y’all stand versus what they (the N.C. Local Government Commission) want as a minimum and then also how you compare with other towns your size, y’all are in a pretty strong financial position compared to some other towns your size in North Carolina,” said Carrick.

The N.C. Local Government Commission, a branch of the N.C. Department of State Treasurer, requires that any county or municipality that has “indicators of concern” sign a letter outlining plans to answer the concern. Faith had no indicators of concern, Carrick said.