By KEVIN BERGER, Local Journalism Initiative
City of Martensville councillors voted during their June 16 meeting to approve the audited financial statements for the year ending December 31, 2025, which saw the municipality finish out with a slightly higher than expected operating surplus of $1.287 million.
Prior to approving the audited financial statements, council received a presentation from Landon Grubb, a partner at the firm BDO Canada LLP which acts as the city’s auditor.
Grubb’s presentation, which was mostly focused on the process of the audit, first outlined the auditor’s responsibilities and stressed that while they assist in preparing the financial statements, administration provides all the numbers contained within.
He also said that they do not go through every single dollar, and use specific thresholds to identify large errors.
Grubb noted that while they do not conduct a forensic audit specifically aimed at identifying fraud, they do “put a significant amount on emphasis on potential areas” where fraud may appear.
With that in mind, “through our audit procedures, we’re not aware of any fraud affecting the city,” said Grubb.
Grubb said they also identified no significant control deficiencies — in other words, problems with the city’s internal procedures that constituted a threat to the organization.
He noted they did make a couple of recommendations for areas of improvement to management, but they were “nothing serious.”
Ultimately, Grubb said they were comfortable in stating their draft opinion was an “unqualified”, meaning that it was the best kind of audit opinion that they can give.
“It indicates that we have no reservations about the material accuracy of the financial statements,” he said.
Statement highlights
According to the consolidated statement of operations, which provides the budgeted and actual revenues and expenses of the city for the fiscal year, Martensville originally budgeted $28.539 million in revenue and $27.382 million in expenses for 2025, resulting in a surplus of $1.157 million.
Instead, the city accumulated $28.482 million in revenue and $27.195 million in expenses, resulting in a surplus of $1,287,772.
The city was nearly spot on projecting the amount of tax revenue it would take in last year, budgeting for $11,830,100 and instead taking in $11,813,290, a difference of about $17,000.
However, there were two other major differences in the revenue column: the city brought in $1.2 million more than expected from fees and charges, and roughly $1.475 million less than expected in provincial/federal grants.
On the expenses side, the city was mostly accurate with its budget projections with a few exceptions. General government services cost about $100,000 less than expected, protective services were about $110,000 under budget, and cultural services cost $330,000 more than projected.
Finally, the city’s accumulated surplus — the sum of all non-financial assets and net financial assets, which reflects the amount of resources available to provide future services — increased by about $1 million from 2024 to more than $149 million.