Fort Scott received good news from an independent auditor's report Tuesday, which found the city to be clear of any state or federal statute violations regarding financial bookkeeping.

Terry Sercer, an accountant for Diel, Banwart and Bolton accounting firm, gave his annual audit report finding at the city commission meeting.

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"This year, I'm glad to tell you we had no violations of any statues that we checked in this audit," Sercer said. "We had seven or eight page statutory checklist that we were required to go through, and the city met those requirements. So there were no statutory violations to cite in this audit, which is good."

The city's general fund, which acts as the city's checkbook for operating expenses, actually went up from the start of last year to the end. The city started with an unencumbered cash balance of $648,946 and ended with $763,887. They had just over $5 million in expenditures but had over $5.1 million in cash revenue.

Sercer said it's good to have a month or two worth of expenses built up in case a delay in collecting tax revenue arises. He said some cities spend their general fund "down to nothing."

The audit included a schedule of expenditures of federal money that funneled into the city last year. The city spent $852,830 in federal funds through grants for various projects.

For example, the city received $152,105 last year from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development which passed through the Kansas Department of Commerce to build the east side fire station. The CDBG small cities grant has funded $400,000 for the building and it has cost $586,129 to construct. The city has financed $250,000 through temporary notes for the facility, which is all but completed with the exception of fixing the upstairs for a training room to be used by emergency responders.

Another large portion of the federal spending is for street, sidewalk and underground infrastructure improvements to the downtown area. The improvements, scheduled to begin this year, are estimated to cost over $2.5 million and will be funded by two HUD grants of $544,500, a Kansas Department of Transportation grant of $1.4 million, revenue bonds totaling $262,495 and local funds of $39,875.

"It always is an eye opener to me about how much federal money goes through the city and all the cities we audit," Sercer said.

Other noteable federal money the city received was $28,623 to go toward a school resource officer from the U.S. Department of Justice and $111,987 from the U.S. Department of Transportation for the airport improvement project at the Fort Scott Municipal Airport.

The audit found no violations of federal laws regarding the city's handling of federal funds.