Altoona's annual audit report, delivered Wednesday, didn't change much.
"It just confirms our situation," Finance Director Omar Strohm said.
That situation?
"Not good," Strohm said. "And getting worse."
According to auditor Dan Bradley of Young Oakes & Brown, the operational deficit for 2010 was $1.5 million. That deficit was more than $500,000 greater than projected near the end of last year at budget time.
The city drew the money to cover the deficit from an unreserved fund balance that was $2.7 million at the end of 2010, Strohm said.
Bradley also listed eight findings.
"It sounds like a lot," he said. "But there's been a dramatic improvement over the years."
Some of the findings are systemic and impractical to rectify, resulting from the number of workers the city can afford to employ on various tasks, Bradley said.
Most of those relate to "segregation of duties" or expert qualifications - such as a staff CPA to prepare reports.
Others, Bradley thinks, have been or can be resolved this year.
Among those are the lack of a method to track delinquent accounts that have gone to the county tax claims bureau, he said. Another is the timely depositing of alarm permit fees collected by the police department, an issue that has been corrected, he said.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.
