Colquitt County Pulse

Governmental revenues by source

Basis: Governmental funds (modified accrual) — Statement of Revenues, Expenditures and Changes in Fund Balances (pp. 23–24), totals column, all governmental funds. FY2023 Audited

Source: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023, pp. 23–24 (Carr, Riggs & Ingram, LLC, audited) — FY2023 financial report (PDF) · FY2023 Audited.

Governmental expenditures by function

Basis: Governmental funds (modified accrual) — pp. 23–24, totals column, all governmental funds. FY2023 Audited

Source: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023, pp. 23–24 (audited) — FY2023 financial report (PDF) · FY2023 Audited.

Governmental activities — government-wide

Basis: Government-wide (full accrual) — Statement of Activities (pp. 18–19), governmental activities only. These figures use a different accounting basis from the fund tables above and are not interchangeable with them. FY2023 Audited

Program revenues

General revenues

Expenses by function — with net (expense) revenue

Source: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023, pp. 18–19 (audited) — FY2023 financial report (PDF) · FY2023 Audited.

Business-type activities — Solid Waste Fund

Basis: Government-wide / proprietary funds (full accrual) — pp. 18–19, 26–28. The Solid Waste Fund is the county's only enterprise fund; there are no water, sewer, electric, gas, or other utility funds. FY2023 Audited

Source: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023, pp. 18–19, 26–28 (audited) — FY2023 financial report (PDF) · FY2023 Audited.

Fund balances by fund

Basis: Governmental funds (modified accrual) — Balance Sheet, Governmental Funds (pp. 20–21), June 30, 2023. FY2023 Audited

What the balances are made of — all governmental funds (pp. 20–21)

Source: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023, pp. 20–21, 70–71 (audited) — FY2023 financial report (PDF) · FY2023 Audited.

Net position composition

Basis: Government-wide (full accrual) — Statement of Net Position (pp. 16–17), June 30, 2023. FY2023 Audited

Source: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023, pp. 16–17, 100–102 (audited) — FY2023 financial report (PDF) · FY2023 Audited.

Debt and long-term obligations

June 30, 2023. Bonded debt, the lease liability, the pension liability, compensated absences, and health claims payable are separate categories and are kept apart on purpose. FY2023 Audited

Source: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023, Notes 3, 4, 5, 6; MD&A p. 15 (audited) — FY2023 financial report (PDF) · FY2023 Audited.

Budget and actual — as printed in the audit

The only budget figures on this page are the audited statements' own budgetary comparison schedule (pp. 63–65), labeled exactly as the statements present them. The Original and Final budget columns are identical in every line of the General Fund schedule — no amendments are reflected — so there was no "final budget increase" to report. FY2023 Audited

General Fund — annual budget (pp. 63–65)

Source: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023, pp. 63–65, 82; Note 1 (audited) — FY2023 financial report (PDF) · FY2023 Audited.

Caveats and source disclosures

Read these before citing any figure from this page.

• June 30 fiscal year-end; FY2023 is the newest verifiable audit. The newest independently audited financial statements available for Colquitt County are for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023. Figures on this page are from that audit; they are not current-year (FY2024–FY2026) figures, and more recent county audits had not been verified when this page was prepared. The auditor's report is dated March 29, 2024. No figure here is labeled "2023 budget," "current," or "adopted."
• Audited figures only. Every number on this page traces to the FY2023 statements. The county's posted FY2024/FY2025 adopted-budget PDFs are scanned images that could not be verified and were not used; the only budget figures shown are the audited statements' own budget-vs-actual schedules, labeled as the statements present them.
• FY2025 was attempted and is not included. The FY2025 financial report is listed on the UGA TED portal, but TED was down (HTTP 503, "Down for maintenance") on every download attempt on 2026-10-23, so no FY2025 figure could be verified. No FY2025 number from search snippets, indexes, or any other secondary rendering appears here.
• Two accounting bases coexist in the statements. Fund-basis (modified accrual, pp. 20–24) and government-wide (accrual, pp. 16–19) totals differ by design — for example, revenues of $47,380,449 (fund) vs $47,586,510 (government-wide); property taxes of $18,705,119 (fund) vs $18,640,661 (government-wide); General Government of $5,297,421 (fund, current) vs $12,133,666 (government-wide). Every table on this page carries its basis label; figures from different bases are never summed or compared without the label.
• "No debt" must never stand alone. The county has $0 bonded debt and $0 loans — genuinely — but it also carries a $6,362,534 net pension liability, $487,294 of compensated absences, a $1,200,000 estimated self-insured health-claims payable, and a $16,756 lease liability — $8,066,584 of non-bonded obligations in total. Any display of the $0 / $16,756 debt figures appears alongside the pension and obligations figures.
• The pension liability's jump has a stated cause. The net pension liability rose from $1,626,464 to $6,362,534 (+$4,736,070) in one year because the plan's investments lost value (net investment income −$3,510,225; fiduciary net position fell from $24,579,242 to $20,685,250; funded ratio 93.8% → 76.5%). It is a measured accounting liability (measured December 31, 2022, 7.00% discount rate), not new borrowing and not a bill due.
• Most of the fund balance is restricted sales-tax capital money. Of the $37,903,653 total governmental fund balance, $23,555,457 (62.1%) is restricted — $20,303,291 for capital outlay and $3,252,166 for public safety, judicial, and health purposes. The freely available figure is General Fund unassigned: $14,192,391. The $37,903,653 is never headlined here without that restriction context.
• The General Fund shrank while total fund balances grew — both are shown. In FY2023 the General Fund fell $979,430 (actual expenditures $26,585,456 exceeded its own revenues $25,605,214; the gap was closed by $2,398,704 of transfers in, dominated by the one-time $2,298,704 ARPA pass-through) even as total governmental fund balances rose $5,315,858 on SPLOST/TSPLOST collections. General Fund unassigned balance equals 53% of General Fund expenditures (MD&A).
• FY2023 revenue includes one-time federal money. Intergovernmental revenue includes $2,298,704 of ARPA/SLFRF revenue recognized in FY2023 (restated as unearned at June 30, 2022, then recognized and transferred to the General Fund; the ARPA Fund ended the year at $0). Total federal awards expended were $2,584,824. Neither FY2023 intergovernmental revenue nor the General Fund's transfers-in should be read as a recurring run-rate.
• Audit findings. The opinion is unmodified, but the auditor reported ten material weaknesses (IC 2023-001 through IC 2023-010 — segregation of duties; capital assets; expenditures/inventory/payables/accruals; internal-service-fund deficits; revenues/receivables; pension liabilities/deferred items; custodial funds; custodial bank reconciliations; interfund balances/transfers; and the Library component unit) and two instances of noncompliance (IC 2023-011 — budgets not adopted for all special revenue funds and expenditures in excess of appropriations at the legal level of control, a violation of Georgia budget law; IC 2023-012 — late Federal Audit Clearinghouse Data Collection Form submission). Every primary-government finding is a repeat of a prior-year finding, and the county was not a low-risk auditee.
• Restatement (Note 2). Beginning balances were restated for an error in the ARPA Fund: $2,298,704 previously reported as FY2022 revenue/fund balance was in fact unearned revenue. Governmental beginning net position fell $97,535,879 → $95,237,175 and the ARPA Fund's beginning balance fell $2,298,704 → $0. All FY2022 comparative columns in the MD&A are post-restatement; only FY2023 figures are used on this page, apart from beginning-balance and change figures expressly labeled as such. The auditor's report carries an Emphasis of Matter paragraph (opinion not modified) covering this restatement.
• Component-unit separation. Health Department ($714,210) and Library ($2,623,070) figures belong to the discretely presented component units (combined $3,337,280) and are kept separate from county (primary government) figures. The Health Department's negative unrestricted net position (−$618,311) and the reporting entity's only OPEB amounts live inside the component units — never attributed to the county itself.
• Proprietary-fund presentation difference (not an error). The proprietary fund statements (pp. 26–27) report the Solid Waste Fund gross of interfund balances (total assets $4,861,320; total liabilities $1,119,114), while p. 16 eliminates the $169,934 internal balance and the $485,276/$315,342 due-to/due-from pair against governmental funds for the government-wide columns. This page uses the pp. 16–17 totals for government-wide displays.
• Claims payable is an estimate that moved sharply. The $1,200,000 estimated claims payable (self-insured health plan) — nearly double the prior year's $650,000 — is a third-party-administrator estimate (Note 5), and Finding IC 2023-004 concerns exactly this fund's deficit accounting.
• No population figure. No population figure is printed anywhere in the source document (it has no statistical/demographic section), so none is shown on this page.
• Officials (context, as printed June 30, 2023, report p. 1): Chairman Denver F. Braswell; County Manager Charles "Chas" Cannon; Finance Director David Zeanah.

Inconsistencies inside the source document

• MD&A says unrestricted net position increased 11% — it decreased 10.8%. The MD&A (p. 9) states: "Unrestricted net position totals $10,452,059, an 11 percent increase compared to the prior year." Its own table prints prior-year unrestricted of $11,720,901, so the change is −$1,268,842 (−10.8%) — the magnitude is right and the direction is wrong. This page uses the statements' figures: the audit's MD&A describes the change in unrestricted net position as an 11% increase; the statements show a decrease of $1,268,842 (10.8%).
• MD&A expense-share percentages do not recompute. The MD&A (p. 11) states public safety is "approximately 47 percent" of governmental expenses and public works "approximately 16 percent." From the statements: public safety $15,790,878 / $45,535,686 = 34.7%; public works $12,762,470 / $45,535,686 = 28.0%. No alternative denominator in the statements reproduces the printed pair, so the MD&A percentages are not republished here; any shares shown are computed from the statement figures with the basis labeled. (The MD&A's revenue shares do verify as approximately correct: property taxes 39.2%, other taxes 37.2%, charges 9.9%.)
• MD&A net-position mix percentages are off. The MD&A (p. 9) states net investment in capital assets is "65 percent" of net position and restricted is "25 percent." Recomputed from the statements: 66.4% and 23.3% (unrestricted 10.3% vs the printed "10 percent" verifies). Immaterial to any headline figure; recomputed shares are used where shares are shown.
• Pension interest and benefit-payment lines differ by $39,967 between Note 4 and the RSI — totals agree. Note 4's changes table and the RSI Schedule of Changes (p. 67) print different interest-on-liability and benefit-payment lines; each presentation foots independently to the same net change in total pension liability ($842,078) and the same ending net pension liability ($6,362,534), and the $39,967 differences offset exactly. This page publishes only the totals (total pension liability, fiduciary net position, net pension liability), which agree everywhere.
• The document contradicts itself on the pension plan's money-weighted rate of return. Note 4 and the RSI notes table print conflicting money-weighted return figures, and the fiduciary-net-position rollforward (net investment income −$3,510,225 on a ~$24.6M base) is consistent with a negative return. No money-weighted rate of return from this document is published on this page; investment performance is described in the dollar figures, which foot.
• Health and welfare differs by $850 between the two statements. Fund-basis current health and welfare expenditures total $375,896 (General Fund $375,046 + nonmajor $850); government-wide health and welfare expense is $375,046. The $850 nonmajor expenditure has no visible counterpart in the government-wide function lines. Totals on both statements foot independently and both are used as printed, each under its own basis label.
• Depreciation allocation caption overstates its own total by the $8,016 amortization. Note 3's allocation table is captioned "Depreciation and amortization expense" and totals $4,583,556 (General Government $1,512,573 + Public Safety $962,547 + Public Works $2,108,436), but $4,583,556 is depreciation only per the capital-asset rollforward; amortization of right-to-use lease assets is a further $8,016, for a combined $4,591,572 (the amount the reconciliation uses). This page labels $4,583,556 "depreciation" or uses $4,591,572 for "depreciation and amortization," never the combined label on the smaller figure.
• Two printed label errors (no numeric effect). (a) The Solid Waste cash-flow statement captions a +$174,247 movement "Net decrease in cash and cash equivalents" — cash rose from $716,522 to $890,769; the arithmetic foots and only the caption is wrong. (b) The General Fund budget schedule's final page (p. 65) heads its first column "Final Budget" where the schedule's pattern (pp. 63–64) is "Original Budget"; Original and Final are identical in every line, so no total is affected. Note 2's heading also misprints "PRIO PERIOD ADJUSTMENT." None of these changes any figure used here.
• MD&A "next year's budget" figure is not used. The MD&A cites $25,596,215 of FY2024 General Fund budgeted expenditures, described as "a 2% increase over the 2023 final budgeted amounts." That is an MD&A narrative assertion only: it does not tie to the audited schedule's final budget total ($25,134,481 — a difference of $461,734; $25,596,215 is +1.8% of it, not +2%), and no FY2024 budget document was verified. It is not published on this page as an adopted-budget figure.

Source for every figure on this page: Colquitt County, Georgia — Financial Statements, June 30, 2023 (Carr, Riggs & Ingram, LLC, audited; unmodified opinions; report dated March 29, 2024). The opinions are based in part on other auditors for the Colquitt County Health Department component unit (58% of component-unit assets, 21% of net position, 85% of revenues) — FY2023 financial report (PDF, colquittcountyga.gov).