ORANGE COVE – The city of Orange Cove has another year’s audit on the books and is picking up steam as it clears out a multi-year backlog of unaudited finances.
At its meeting May 13, the Orange Cove City Council voted 4-0, with Mayor Diana Guerra Silva absent, to accept the independent auditor’s report and financial statements for fiscal year 2022-23. With this audit complete, the city is down to just two more reports it is behind on — the fiscal year 2023-24 and 2024-25 audits.
By this time next year, the city should also be able to have finished its audit for the current 2025-26 fiscal year, which ends on June 30. In response to questions about why Orange Cove is so far behind, city staff explained that, up until a few years ago, staff turnover in management and the finance department was so frequent, the city’s record keeping was not up to par.
“There was a mess, and we had to clean up all the mess before we could get in too far, and so the goal is that we are on track for this next year because they’ve done all the work,” Councilmember Cassy Ortiz said.
The audit, prepared by Bryant L. Jolley CPAs and presented by the city’s accounting consultant Patrick Chaffee, received an unmodified, or “clean,” opinion.
Chaffee told the council that this means the auditors determined the financial statements were fairly presented in accordance with accounting standards.
He said the audit did also include four repeat findings of material weaknesses and significant deficiencies related to internal controls. These were discussed at length when the council received the 2021-22 audit in July 2025; however, city management has been actively addressing these issues alongside Chaffee.
These findings included two significant deficiencies and two material weaknesses. A material weakness is a deficiency in internal controls that creates a “reasonable possibility” that a misstatement of financial statements will not be prevented or corrected, according to the audit report. A significant deficiency is less severe, but still important enough to bring attention to.
The material weaknesses identified were related to the year-end closing process and bank reconciliations. Chaffee said the auditors identified many year-end adjustments during the audit process, which means transactions were not recorded properly throughout the fiscal year to match the city’s fund balances.
“A lot of these were related to reconciliation,” Chaffee said. “This is a good thing.”
Chaffee and the auditors were able to identify many “receivable funds” that weren’t filled out, such as grant reimbursements the city was eligible for but just hadn’t submitted to actually get the money paid back to it.
“So while it’s something that was a deficiency, it also helps the city that we’re reviewing this,” he said.
The significant deficiencies were related to medical reimbursements and credit card authorizations and documentation.
Chaffee said that ever since he started working with the city a few years ago, he’s had to put his “private investigator hat on” to identify Orange Cove’s receivable and billable expenses.
This is because of major staff turnover throughout the 2021-22 and 2022-23 fiscal years, he said, in both city management and the finance department as well as with the city’s engineering consultants. Chaffee has been reaching out to engineers who no longer work with the city and working with Precision Engineering to identify invoices and bill other engineers to ensure the city has the funds it should have.
“We’re in a much better place than we were two years ago when I started,” Chaffee said. “Finance operations have been stabilized, closing procedures and reconciliations are being standardized.”
Chaffee said much of the work he’s doing he is also now handing off to Finance Director Danny Jimenez and his department.
“(I’m) making sure that even though his staff may not be taking it on the next round, they’re able to read my work … and they’ll be able to recreate it if they have to,” Chaffee said.
Within the next month, Orange Cove will be presenting its draft budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year and city staff are expecting to be in a more stable and clear financial position thanks to the work done to complete the annual audits.
