City maintains ‘good, healthy reserve’

Scott Szabo, partner at Lauer, Szabo and Associates LLC, opened the Holyoke City Council meeting on Tuesday, April 18, with an audit report. 

“Everything’s in great shape,” he said. “No concerns financially with any individual fund. No concerns with any of the accounting practices. The audit went very well.” 

Total revenue was listed at $1,000,941, expenditures at $3,000,333 and transfers in at $1,000,168. 

“Up a little from what’s historically been done,” Szabo said. The utility fund went up $72,000 and there’s $11 million in the fund at the end of the year. 

“The only thing to keep in mind with the utility fund is that does include all your depreciable assets,” Szabo said, referring to assets with a life of more than a year that, over time, gradually reduce in value.

The general fund went down $223,000, but there is still $2,000,850 in the fund at the end of the year, or about 10 months still of reserves. 

“A good, healthy reserve for your city,” Szabo noted. 

The council accepted the 2022 audit.  

City Superintendent Jeremy Thompson followed Szabo’s audit report. The electric department, Jeremy said, has experienced no outages since the last meeting. Their crew has been busy with such projects as changing out the service behind Scholl Oil & Transportation Company on the 800 block of East Denver Street. 

City employee Hunter Bergstrom will be attending Mesa Hotline School from May 1-4. 

The Holyoke Street Department crew has been “crack-filling” and sweeping the downtown area. A sidewalk construction project has commenced on Highway 385, the goal being to complete the project the first or second week of June. Matt Meusborn is going to start working with the crew on commercial driver’s licenses two to three days a week from 3:30 to 5 p.m. 

“There will be no overtime, so they will have to work a little bit on their own” Meusborn said.

Police Chief Doug Bergstrom reported the Holyoke Police Department has generated over 100 calls for service from March 30 to April 13. In code enforcement, there were two dogs at large, five animal complaints and two municipal code violations. A council member mentioned an incident on Reynolds Avenue involving a dog bite. Bergstrom responded he was not aware of the incident, but he would look into it.

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