Independent Financial Audit Affirms Surplus for

Office of the Mayor

WOONSOCKET, RHODE ISLAND

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 26, 2021

Contact: Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; 401-767-9205

Independent Financial Audit Affirms Surplus for

Woonsocket Fiscal Year 2020 City and School

WOONSOCKET, R.I.: Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt today announced that the City’s independent financial statement audit for the fiscal year-ended June 30, 2020 has been completed and submitted to the State Auditor General’s Office. In a clean, unqualified opinion the firm of Hague, Sahady & Co., P.C., the audit confirmed that both the City of Woonsocket and the Woonsocket Education Department (WED) ended the fiscal year with budgetary surpluses that totaled $479,417 for the City and $2,562,362 for the WED.

Mayor Baldelli-Hunt stated, "The pandemic made fiscal year 2020 challenging to manage from a financial viewpoint and I am pleased that we were able to overcome numerous obstacles and still generate another City budgetary surplus." The Mayor added, "We were able to withstand the daily challenges imposed upon us by the pandemic in part due to the measures we instituted in previous years to strengthen our financial and operational structures and to enhance our budgetary controls so that we could better deal with unexpected circumstances. These measures included lowering our debt structure by over $60 million since 2013 which decreased our fixed costs and reducing property taxes and improving City services which paved the way for new residential and commercial development."

The Mayor lauded the efforts of City Finance Director Christine Chamberland and WED Finance Director Brad Peryea in conscientiously managing their respective financial operations throughout the pandemic and completing a successful audit. The Mayor asserted, "This was not a standard year for our Finance Departments in any respect. State, federal, and local revenues were uncertain for most of the year, expenditures were often driven by situational responses to the pandemic, federal and state paperwork increased exponentially, and we had to work through pandemic related absences in our workforce. All these factors made generating financial information challenging throughout the fiscal year and performing the audit more time consuming. I commend the Finance Departments for their hard work and dedication during this demanding period."

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City Hall P.O. Box B Woonsocket, RI 02895

Telephone (401) 767-9205 Fax (401) 765-4569 E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.