ALPENA PUBLIC SCHOOLS: BUDGETS & AUDITS
Lady Budgetdown went looking through Alpena's budgets and audits for something dramatic.
The ledger declined to cooperate. 📜
And frankly, that's not a bad thing.
Looking back several years, Alpena's General Fund budgets were generally built pretty close to balanced.
For example:
📜 2022–23 budget: about $68,000 surplus
📜 2023–24 adopted budget: about $118,000 surplus
📜 2024–25 adopted budget: roughly balanced
Then came the actual 2024–25 audit.
The district received an unmodified audit opinion, commonly called a clean opinion.
I also did not find a material weakness, significant deficiency, questioned cost, or other audit finding that deserves its own Lady Budgetdown rabbit hole.
Sometimes there simply isn't a scandal hiding behind the spreadsheet. But there is something worth watching going forward.
Alpena finished 2024–25 with approximately $17.45 million in General Fund equity.
The 2025–26 final budget calls for spending about $930,000 more than revenue, which would bring that cushion down to roughly $16.51 million.
Then the 2026–27 adopted budget projects:
💰 Revenue: $53.29 million
💸 Expenditures: $57.37 million
📉 Projected deficit: $4.07 million
🏦 Projected ending fund equity: about $12.44 million
If both budget projections played out exactly as written, Alpena's General Fund cushion would decline by roughly $5 million in two years.
But grab the quill before grabbing the pitchfork. 🪶
That $4.07 million is a budget projection, not an audited loss. The district adopted the 2026–27 budget before Michigan's state budget was finalized and described its assumptions as essentially a worst-case scenario.
Budgets change. Audits tell us what actually happened. So Lady Budgetdown isn't sounding an alarm over Alpena.
The audit is clean. The district has a substantial General Fund cushion. The next two budgets propose using some of it.
That simply earns a little circle in the ledger so we can come back later and see what actually happened. ⭕
Because sometimes following the money means finding a problem.
And sometimes it means saying:
Nothing particularly alarming here, but this number is worth watching.
With receipts and respect. 👑📖
#LadyBudgetdown #AlpenaPublicSchools #SchoolFinance #SchoolBudget #FiscalTransparency #FollowTheNumbers #WithReceiptsAndRespect