The St. Martinville City Council received an audit report that returned more findings for the 2024 fiscal year than it had for the 2023 fiscal year. 

Burt Kolder with Kolder, Slaven & Company addressed the council Monday evening with his company’s findings following the yearly audit investigation that must be conducted yearly for every city government. 

Kolder said a total  of 12 findings came out of the report, with two of them being duplicates which totals a net total of 10 findings. 

That’s twice as much as the 2023 audit, which showed a total of five findings that were submitted to the city when that audit was presented. 

“Three pertain to utility operations,” Kolder said. 

One of the big findings seemed to be errors in meter readings due to the recently installed new software for water meters. Bills that were checked for accuracy would have the readings changed, which Mayor Jason Willis said was an issue with the recently purchased software not communicating with accounting software. 

“(The two softwares) don’t talk to each other,” Willis said. “We finally got the right person to say they could resolve this in a week.”

Kolder also noted a significant loss of revenue in the utilities department, where the water and sewer departments lost $97,000 in revenue as opposed to the $37,000 that was lost last fiscal year. 

Kolder speculated that loss could be due to the meter readings and also suggested more cohesion between the accounting department and utility department in the future. 

“I suspect it’s because of the billings,” he said.