City of Powell River has received a clean audit for its 2018 financial year.
At the Monday, May 13, special council meeting, where the city’s five-year plan and tax rates bylaws were passed, BDO Canada Chartered Professional Accountants partner Brian Szabo outlined the audit to city councillors.
Szabo reviewed the executive summary to provide a high level view of the audit report for mayor and council.
As far as audit findings are concerned, the audit provides a high level of assurance over the accuracy but not absolute assurance.
“There is a small chance there might be a misstatement in the financial statements that goes undetected, but it is a very small chance,” said Szabo. “As of today’s date, the audit work is all complete and the only things that are left to do are for yourselves to approve the financial statement, and then after that I will just carry up on a subsequent events review with staff just to ensure there is nothing that has happened up to today’s date that we are not aware of.”
Szabo said there was nothing that came to the auditor’s attention as a result of the audit procedures that they did not expect.
The auditors did not identify any significant deficiencies in internal controls over financial reporting during the year ended December 31, 2018, that they considered to be material weaknesses, said Szabo.
He added that the policies that City of Powell River uses in its financial reporting are consistent with other similar municipalities and are in accordance with public sector accounting standards.
