By LEONARD GRAY

Managing Editor

EDGARD — The 2005 audit report for St. John the Baptist Parish was delivered Tuesday by Rebowe & Company and gave a positive report, though not without some reservations.

Tom Naquin of Rebowe reviewed the report during the Finance Committee’s meeting and said the parish made &#8220pretty good progress in spite of the hurdles.”

With that, the report came in with an unqualified opinion, meaning no actionable problems with financial actions or recordkeeping.

One reportable condition relates to fixed-asset records not being updated in a timely manner. Naquin recommended performing one fixed-asset audit and use those software records as a foundation for a continual update system any time such assets change.

The parish council has already addressed that issue, and a proposal to contract with American Appraisal, who did a fixed-asset audit in 1999 on a full scale with an update in 2000, was presented to the council on June 27.

At that earlier meeting of the Finance Committee, upon prompting by Councilman Ronnie Smith, the council agreed to advertise for proposals for the contract, despite arguments that if the $70,000 job went to someone other than American Appraisal, it could cost more.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the council agreed to contract with American Appraisal.

Naquin continued on the audit report, and pointed out other issues, including the council’s failure to reduce the budget deficit to zero within a year. Also, the parish budgeted a deficit for the Criminal Court Fund for 2005. Both actions violate state law.

Another problem was allowing the Communications District Fund’s expenditures to exceed projections by 5 percent or more without a budget amendment to cover the change.

Finally, bank deposits were under-collateralized by some $40,000 in 2005, but state law mandates that the security for deposits at all times must match all of the amount of collected funds on deposit.

Parish President Nickie Monica praised the work performed by the Finance Department and the Parish Council to make their progress, and added the parish will receive another Certificate of Excellence, as it has for the past three years.