Friday, April 19, 2024
The city of Granbury was given a clean bill of health during its recent annual audit, even though the municipality’s indebtedness has risen by $35 million since 2014 and is expected to spike by another $48 million this year.
Finance Director Eva Gregory told the City Council at its regular meeting last week that she projects the city will reach $121 million in indebtedness in 2019.
The reason for the debt is Gran-bury’s growing population and large, infrastructure-related projects that were/are needed to meet the growing city’s needs, she said.
The city has debt for Phases 1 and II of the new water treatment plant, water distribution system improvements, an advanced-technology water meter system that replaced aging meters and wastewater treatment system improvements.
The city has long had a good credit rating and strong fund balance, which has helped when taking on debt.
City Manager Chris Coffman noted that the city was able to obtain financing for the projects at “extremely low interest rates.”
Gregory’s comments at last week’s council meeting were made when she presented the council with the city’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for the 2017-2018 fiscal year.
Daniel Hungerford of the Weatherford-based George, Morgan & Sneed accounting firm was also present. The company performed the independent audit.
AUDIT DETAILS
As of Sept. 30, 2018 – the last day of the fiscal year – the city’s fund balance was $7.7 million, according to Gregory.
She stated that property valuations and sales tax base have been “steadily growing.” Property valuations have averaged 5 percent growth each year for the past six years, she said, while the city’s property tax rate has stayed under 40 cents per $100 in valuation since 2012.
Sales tax revenues, the largest revenue source for the city’s General Fund budget, continue to increase each year, Gregory said. In Fiscal Year 2017-2018, the city collected $8.6 million in sales tax, representing a 9 percent increase over the previous year.
“As you can see, this is very strong growth that we have been experiencing,” she told the council.
Gregory also said that Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) collections “remained stable” during the fiscal year covered by the audit, although there was a decrease of about 1 percent over the previous fiscal year due to one less outage at the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant.
‘As you can see, this is very strong growth that we have been experiencing.’
– Eva Gregory, city finance director
The outages help fill hotel rooms.
Gregory noted that, for 17 consecutive years, the city has received the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Reporting.
After Gregory’s presentation, Hungerford told the council that his company found no issues in its review of the city’s financial accounting practices.
The full CAFR can be viewed at www.granbury.org/financialtransparency.
