The City of Vero Beach filed its 2022-23 fiscal year audit nearly one year late, then its 2023-24 audit nearly three months late, but instead of demanding the 2024-25 audit begin in January to get ahead of the state’s June 30 reporting deadline, City Manager Monte Falls waited until April 2 to engage the city’s auditors, setting Vero up for another high-pressure race to finish.

Public records show the city’s audit firm Cherry Bekaert sent Falls an engagement letter on April 2 estimating its staff would need to spend 600 hours completing an audit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2025. Falls executed a $98,100-plus-expenses contract the same day.

The contract did not come before the Vero Beach City Council because it arrived between the council’s March 24 and April 14 meetings, and the council had previously told Falls and Finance Director Lisa Burnham to start the audit as soon as possible.

Why wasn’t the audit process started earlier?

Councilman Aaron Vos on Feb. 9 indicated that auditors were waiting on information from the city needed to estimate their time.

“Preparation of the required financial worksheets is underway and will be submitted to auditor Cherry Bekaert by the end of March,” Vos said in his usual weekly update to constituents. “The audit is scheduled for completion on or before June 30, remaining on track for an on-time finish.”

In his March 8 update, Vos added that, “According to Finance Director Lisa Burnham, auditor Cherry Bekaert has committed to a start date that supports submission of the audit results on or before June 30.”

In fact, Cherry Bekaert gave no guarantee audit work would be completed and financials produced by June 30, the deadline to file the documents with the Florida auditor general. Accountants cannot make such guarantees, as they explain in the contract’s terms.

First of all, they have no idea what they’ll find once they crack open the city’s books.

Beyond that, the auditors have no power to force Burnham and her staff to provide the files, documents and data they need in a timely way. City finance staff members prepare the detailed financial statements that the auditors review. The auditors can’t begin their task until those documents are handed over.

In the backup packet for the Feb. 17 city finance commission meeting, Burnham informed the committee that the city’s “audit preparation for FY 2024/25 has only recently begun.”

If the finance staff only had the June 30 audit deadline to worry about, the slow start might not be a problem, but Falls explained at the Feb. 17 meeting that the small finance staff has other top-priority projects.

Burnham is in the early stages of a major overhaul of the city’s finance software systems. And according to a proposed budget schedule Falls prepared last week for the City Council, Burnham must take all the departmental budget requests she receives by May 15 and compile them into a working draft citywide budget for Falls to review on June 5 in preparation for public budget workshops in July, with the council set to get the budget on July 15.

These accounting duties might be Burnham’s, but the ultimate responsibility for the city complying with state audit requirements rests with Falls.

Other area governments have managed to complete their audits before their finance staffs have to plunge into the spring budget season.

The Town of Indian River Shores completed its fiscal year 2024-25 audit on March 3, and the town council reviewed the financials on March 26.

The City of Sebastian completed its 2024-25 audit and produced its Certified Audited Financial Reports (CAFR) on March 26, with a public presentation at the April 8 Sebastian City Council meeting.

Indian River County’s auditors completed the county’s very complex 2024-25 audit on March 9, and on March 11, County Clerk and Comptroller Ryan Butler sent commissioners the 434-page packet of audit documents including the CAFR and audits of constitutional offices like the Tax Collector.