Auditor: School District in Good Financial Shape

The Three Village Central School District has been given an 'A' on its fiscal report card.

That's according to an independent audit that said based on analysis of its 2010-2011 finances, the school district is in good shape financially.

Douglas Zimmerman, of the Williamsville, N.Y.-based firm Toski, Schaefer and Co., said the school district is in the top tier of clean audits of more than 100 governmental organizations and agencies it audits across the state.

The auditors' report – a 69-page document which school officials decided Tuesday night will be made available on the district's website – found neither material weaknesses nor significant deficiencies within the district's records and record-keeping processes.

"In this trying fiscal time, the district did a quality job of managing its resources," Zimmerman said.

In addition, the audit found the district to be in compliance with state laws requiring a 4 percent cap on the amount of undesignated reserve funds it can have within a given year. This time last year, for the 2009-2010 school year.

The audit covered not only the financial statements of the year, but also "the procedures that my office follows, as far as how we go about processing purchase orders, paying invoices, processing payroll, all of those activities of the business office," said Jeff Carlson, assistant superintendent for business services. "It's an all-encompassing audit."

The audit, however, recommended the hiring of an actuary to determine how much money should be set aside as reserves for worker's compensation – a service already provided by the outside company that manages the district's worker's compensation program.

"That recommendation has been made before," Carlson said. "We've discussed it with the board. My recommendation, and the board agrees with it, is that it's not really money well spent."