The 2018-19 fiscal audit for Lehighton Area School District should be available within the next month or two, district administration said this week.

“The audit is in line with our Annual Financial Report for 2018-19,” Patricia Denicola, Lehighton business administrator, said during a finance committee meeting on Monday.

The 2018-19 AFR, as well as a few prior years, can be found on the district website under the business office section.

According to the AFR, Lehighton spent $1.77 million more than it took in during the 2018-19 fiscal year, but the situation could have been even worse. The numbers included two one-time revenue sources totaling over $1 million; proceeds from the sale of former elementary school buildings and PlanCon reimbursement that Denicola, who started with the district in March 2019, said should have been coming in during the previous two fiscal years.

“Had we not had those two revenue sources, the end-of-the-year loss would have been well over $3 million,” Denicola added.

She attributed the large deficit to over budgeting in certain areas during previous years including special education and maintenance, to name a few. The district’s total budgeted expenditures for 2018-19 were $40.69 million, while it spent $43.9 million.

Director David Bradley said the school board was “immorally consuming money not available to them.”

“It seems that hasn’t been corrected,” he said.

The comment, however, didn’t sit well with Denicola, who said she has been working hard to get the district back on track since coming on board just over a year ago.

“I was one of the first to say the district is overspending,” Denicola said. “I re-created a budget for 2019-20 and took historical numbers to create a budget based upon what the district had actually been spending. We’ve been cutting costs where we can and I’ve been questioning expenditures.”

The district, she said, is now spending within its budget, however revenue sources are not enough to meet contractual obligations, instructional obligations and special education obligations.

Bradley criticized the administration for not releasing the draft audit to the full board. Denicola said standard practice in the accounting industry calls for audits to be released after they are finalized by the auditors.

Once everything is certified as final, she said, it will be shared with the board, likely at the district’s June meeting.

Lehighton was hoping to have the audit earlier, but the firm completing it, Barbacane, Thornton & Co., had offices in Montgomery County, one of the hardest hit areas by COVID-19, leading to a slight delay.

It is the first year the firm is handling the district’s audit.

Lehighton agreed in October to pay $36,000 to Barbacane, Thornton & Co. to complete its 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 fiscal year audits.