The Tioga City Council heard praises from the city auditor for the state of its financials for last year.
Across the board, the city's finances were healthy and fully accounted for, Auditor Joe Madden said.
'Net assets are a way we measure the health of the city,' he said. 'It's basically the sum of all your profits and losses from the day Tioga was formed until Sept. 30 of 2025, the date of this report. So, you can see over the last, you know, four or five years here that chart's going straight up into the sky there, so that's very good.'
He continued giving the highlights of the unmodified, clean audit.
He spoke about the revenues verses liabilities, which he said were both trending in the right direction.
'So again, another good sign we like to see,' Madden said. 'We like to see your assets go up, your debt go down, because that's going to result in positive growth in your net assets, which on the bottom line there, you can see your net assets for '25 ended at $13.9 [million] compared to $11.2 [million] in '24.'
He drew attention, too, to a number that could be concerning, the unrestricted funds, with an explanation about what resulted in the reported $7 million as a negative asset.
'Normally negative net assets is a bad sign, but in this case we have an explainable reason,' Madden said. 'If you look right above it, you see where we have $7 million reserved for construction, and that's related to your most recent certificates of obligation. You still have the lion's share of that money sitting in a bank account. It's reserved for construction, so we have to allocate it here as a reservation.'
He added that once construction is completed, that negative asset will come off the books.
'So, we're not too worried about that,' Madden said.
He also provided a look at the different government funds and how the cost to run the departments lined up with the revenues they generated.
The water service and capital grants and contributions generated the most money.
Capital grants and contributions 'is where your developers are paying you all to install the water lines and all that,' Madden said, which generated $2.4 million in revenues.
'We do like to see the business-type activities have a profit, which you can see we do, mostly due to those capital contributions,' he said.
He also covered that the firm confirmed all of the city's cash is insured by the bank.
After giving the overview of the city's financials, Madden added that his firm did an evaluation of the city staff and their policies regarding handling the books to ensure all is done correctly.
'Since we often get government money, we have to make sure we're ... spending the money how they want us to do it,' Madden said.
The city hit all of the marks on compliance with the laws and grant policies as well as with the 'internal control over financial reporting,' he said.
'We did a lot of testing on that this year, and again, the last sentence says, 'I noted no matters involving the internal control over financial reporting in this operation that I consider to be a material weakness,’' he said. 'So, again, [City Secretary Donna Carney] and her staff are doing a great job keeping your books running, keeping your books clean and catching any errors before they happen and if they do happen, fixing the errors.'
During the meeting, the council also awarded a contract to Hayter Engineering to manage the city's Texas Community Development Block Grant Fund program for the pump station generator project that will tie into the natural gas line and will include a sound-reducing enclosure for $186,570.
'If we go down without power, this supplies our ... water for [the entire] town,' Mayor Craig Jezek said. 'And then, again, with our new sewer plant coming online, we've got a generator that can power the whole entire sewer plant once it's up and running, too.'
The council also corrected a discrepancy in the fee schedule that cost some residents a $125 difference for a culvert permit.
'I had to pay $200 for my permit whenever your website says $40,' Charles Harpole said. 'How are you going to charge people $200 for the permit?'
Jezek said the discrepancy was because of 'human error,' that the city has to charge the amount passed by ordinance and that the city would not be able to retroactively offer reimbursements, but the correction will be active moving forward for the permit to cost $75.
