Martinsville Gets Clean Audit Opinion; Billing Cycle Fix Urged

Martinsville City Council | September 23, 2026

Article Summary: The Martinsville City Council on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, was told the city had received a clean audit opinion, with healthy reserves in its water, sewer and gas funds. A single internal-control finding on utility rates was traced to the city’s billing cycle and described as fixable by amending an ordinance. No vote was taken.

Audit Presentation Key Points:

• Kelsey D. Swing, of Gilbert, Metzger & Madigan LLP, reported the city “received a clean audit opinion, which is ideal,” according to the minutes.
• Water, sewer and gas funds have healthy reserves; assets and liabilities are up from last year; some reserves have been spent to finish long-planned projects.
• Three of four internal-control listings produce “the same result every year” because of the city’s size; the fourth, on utility rates, arose from a May billing cycle that was issued in June.
• The suggested remedy is updating the ordinance to read “next billing cycle.” No ordinance number was given, no amendment was introduced, and no motion was recorded on the audit.

MARTINSVILLE — The Martinsville City Council on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, received the city’s audit presentation and was told Martinsville had earned a clean audit opinion, with healthy reserves in its water, sewer and gas funds and one utility-rate finding that the auditor said could be cleared up by rewriting a city ordinance.

The item was third of 10 numbered items on the agenda, listed as “Audit Presentation and findings by Kelsey D. Swing, CPA Partner Gilbert, Metzger & Madigan LLP.” Swing was recorded present at City Hall, 55 W. Cumberland St., where Mayor Robert Lovell called the meeting to order at 7 p.m., led the prayer and was joined by all six aldermen, City Clerk Caitlin Dill and City Treasurer Terri Connelly.

According to the minutes, Swing “explained the Financial Statement and budget comparisons” and reported that the city received a clean audit opinion. She told the council that the water, sewer and gas funds have healthy reserves, that assets and liabilities accounts are up from last year and that investment capital “has a decent amount.” Some reserves, the minutes record, “have been spent to finish long planned projects.”

The minutes do not identify which projects, and they attach no figure to any of those statements.

Swing said the council would look over the results and that she would answer any questions that came up. No motion was made and no vote was taken. Item 3 was the only numbered item on the agenda that was not framed as “Consideration and Action,” and the minutes record it as a report rather than an action.

A Billing Cycle That Did Not Match the Audit

The second half of the item turned to the audit’s internal-control findings, which the minutes attribute to a speaker identified only as “Jana” — a name that does not appear anywhere in the meeting’s attendance list. According to the record, she “clarified the reasoning of internal controls from the Certified Public Accountants.”

Because of the size of Martinsville, the minutes state, “the results of listing 1, 2, and 3 are the same result every year.” The record does not describe what any of those three listings say.

The fourth listing was treated differently. It concerned utility rates and, in the minutes’ words, “was an issue based on the billing cycle.” Martinsville’s billing cycle for May was in June, the record states, “but the audit had it down as being in May.” The remedy put to the council was procedural rather than financial: the matter “can simply be resolved by updating the Ordinance to reflect ‘next billing cycle’ instead.”

No ordinance number or code section was identified for the provision that would be amended, no draft amendment was presented, and the council took no action on the finding. Whether an amending ordinance will return to a future agenda is not addressed in either document.

What the Record Does Not Show

Neither of the two documents produced for this meeting — the agenda and the minutes — states the fiscal year the audit covers. Neither contains a single dollar figure from the audit: no fund balances, no revenue or expenditure totals, no reserve amounts and no figure for the investment capital Swing described. The audited financial statements, any management letter and any schedule of findings were not included in the materials distributed with the meeting.

That leaves the characterizations recorded in the minutes — “healthy reserves,” “a decent amount,” “up from last year” — as the full extent of the public record of the city’s audited financial position as presented on Sept. 23. Those are the recording officer’s summary of what was said, not the auditor’s own written conclusions.

The audit reached a council that had already voted, one item earlier, to pay the bills presented. That motion, made by Alderman Chris Davidson and seconded by Alderman Harley Craig, passed 6-0, with no total recorded in the minutes and no bill list attached to either document.