IMPERIAL COUNTY — Discovering no diversions from accepted accounting procedures, an independent auditor gave the Imperial County Transportation Commission a clean bill of fiscal health, it was revealed at the agency’s March 25 meeting.
“This audit mostly determines whether our revenue-fund balances match up with liability expenses, as well as monitoring ICTC’s procedures for managing those funds,” said Mark Baza, agency executive director.
The audit was conducted by Eide Bailly LLP and Bailly partner Phil White answered questions by video conference.
Revenues
David Aguirre, commission associate transportation planner, explained on the assets side of the ledger the commission received $12.58 million from the Transportation Development Act fund. Assets are also comprised of three additional funds. There was revenue of $2.52 million from the State Transit Assistance fund, $301,000 from the Regional Planning and Programs fund and $2,455 from the Regional Collaborations fund for a total of $15.4 million.
In addition, those four funds also generated $1.78 million revenue due from other governments, nearly $70,000 in interest receivable and $4,690 in accounts receivable for a sum of about $17.3 million in total assets, explained Aguirre.
Expenses
As for liabilities, the above four funds together had expenditures of $1.38 million in accounts payable, as well as debt to other funds and unearned revenue, which also included restricted funds of about $15.9 million. These are numerous funds that may only be spent for specific items for which they intended, noted Aguirre. They tallied $17.26 million in total liabilities.
“This was for the FY (fiscal year) 2018-19 so they have already been spent for their planned purposes,” he said. “For every revenue there is an equal liability.”
This meeting was about government funding, 75 percent of which comes from the state, explained Baza.
Aguirre, who attended the meeting in person, characterized fiscal 2018-19 as a very good year. It ran from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019.
Construction Goal
“There were no issues, everything went as planned,” he said. “We actually completed a major construction project, the city of Imperial Transit Station.”
The transit station project included funds from Proposition 1B, the California Transit Security Grant Program.
Its benefits will provide more amenities for Imperial County transit riders,” said Aguirre. “Our expenditures rise a little each year because of salaries, but the majority of the increase is due to transit operations. Funding is tied to when Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) gets their approval from the Federal Transit Administration and forwards funding to ICTC. We submit our funding requests as soon as we get approval of a contract bid.”
Auditor Suggests Change
However, Eide Bailly did recommend one amendment that ICTC plans to implement.
Aguirre explained ICTC has been using the county auditor/controller’s software application to monitor its financial transactions.
“Eide Bailly urged us to acquire our own software because of the limitations of the county auditor’s software,” he said. “With our own software app we’d have more capability to complete our own transactions.”
Commenting on the logistics of the meeting, Baza added “one quick side note. This was a video conference using Zoom video and it went very smoothly.”
In complying with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s directive for residents to shelter in place due the COVID-19 outbreak, ICTC desired to limit the participants in its office conference room in El Centro. There were five who attended in person and three commission members and two Caltrans reps who joined by Zoom Video.
This story is featured in the April 2, 2020 e-Edition.
