Audit Objective

Determine whether the Town of Ticonderoga (Town) Town Board (Board) provided adequate oversight and management of capital projects.

Key Findings

The Board did not provide adequate oversight and management of capital projects. As a result, Town officials did not:

• Monitor capital projects activity for eight projects reviewed, with Board-authorized budgets totaling $20.8 million, to ensure that costs were kept within the authorized budget.
• Maintain complete and adequate capital project accounting records or prepare monthly itemized capital project budget-to-actual reports for the Board. For example, budget modifications totaling $3.2 million were not recorded in the accounting records.
• Close seven completed capital projects in the accounting records.

While we did not observe any instances where a project’s authorized budget was exceeded, without adequate procedures for monitoring all capital project expenditures, there is an increased risk of recording errors going undetected and exceeding the project budget and authorized financing.

Key Recommendations

• Monitor capital projects activity by requiring reports on a monthly basis.
• Maintain complete and accurate accounting records and provide monthly reports to the Board to monitor budget-to-actual project activity.
• Close completed capital projects in a timely manner.

Town officials generally agreed with our recommendations and indicated they planned to initiate corrective action.