Cafr Hagerstown Accounting for Not-for-Profit Organizations

Hagerstown, founded in 1762, is a small town located about 72 miles to the west of Baltimore, covering about 12.1 square miles and home to 39,662 residents. The city is known as the Hub City because of the intersection of interstate I-70 and I-81, routes 40 and 11, and the railways for CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern. It’s a small bedroom town for those that travel to Washington, D.C. or other surrounding cities for work. Although, a large majority of the city’s population is employed by the Washington County Public Schools as well as Meritus Health, which owns the recently constructed hospital. Based upon the most recent CAFR the city of Hagerstown seems to be in relatively great shape financially, leading people to believe that there will be large growth in the future.

Introductory Information

Throughout the introductory, financial and statistical sections of the most recent comprehensive annual financial report, the city of Hagerstown has been awarded the “Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting” by the Government Finance Officers Association for the sixteenth consecutive year, as of the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011. The reports of this city are easily readable and efficiently organized and satisfy both GAAP and related legal requirements. They see no reason as to why they cannot continue the high quality reporting that they have been producing.

In the letter of transmittal, the city of Hagerstown reports receiving other awards such as, the GFAO’s Distinguished Budget Award for annual budget documents, as well as, the award for Outstanding Achievement for the Popular Annual Financial Reporting. Standard and Poor’s gives Hagerstown’s financial planning a rating of AA-. The audit provided reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free of material misstatement and received and unqualified audit opinion (Burker and Hepburn, 2012).

Financial Standing

The city seems to be doing quite well despite some...