Members of the Great Bend City Council’s Administrative Committee heard some good news Monday night when they learned “clean” or “unqualified opinion” on the city’s 2014 audit.

This is the highest possible opinion possible, said Vickie Dreiling of Adams, Brown, Beran and Ball. “Over all, this is good news for the city.”

Great Bend ended up with $28,103,947 in cash in funds and reserves, which is up $1.7 million over last year. In addition, they city’s unencumbered cash (money on hand that is not spoken for) increased to $528,000.

Furthermore, the city’s total debt load of $8,281,000 decreased by $1.5 million over the previous year. The debt is less than 10 percent of the expenditures, which is another good sign.

Also, Dreiling said, all of the city’s funds were under budget. “The city did a good job.”

There was one “statutory violation” regarding the timeliness and extent of the quarterly report publications in the Great Bend Tribune and one “material weakness” in the reporting of federal funds.

But, Dreiling said, neither of these was major and were not breakdowns in internal controls. They were merely easily corrected oversights.

The ABBB report also included recommendations on such matters as better tracking of outstanding checks and inventories of city property. These are an annual feature of the audit.

“The city did a very good job addressing the recommendations,” Dreiling said. 

The committee, which met prior to the council meeting, accepted the report and referred it on to the full council. It will be asked to approve the audit when it meets Aug. 17.