BAY MINETTE — Alabama’s Department of Examiners of Public Accounts presented their finished audit results to the Baldwin County Board of Education last week, and the group has submitted an unmodified opinion with no findings, the best opinion a school system can receive.

“The examiners spend three to four months each year extensively auditing our records, so I’m proud to receive another positive clean audit report stating we are in full compliance with all governmental accounting standards as well as all federal, state and local regulations,” John Wilson, the school system’s chief financial officer, said. “I’m also proud that this is my fourth audit report as chief financial officer for the school system which also represents our fourth audit in a row with a clean audit opinion with no findings.”

Wilson said he and his staff spent months with the examiners, allowing them to go over any and all financial documents and information they needed to compile their report.

“They were here in our office from October to January going through all of our records,” Wilson said. “To have a team of examiners going through our records for three months and to not have them find anything wrong is a good thing.”

The report, which was an audit of the system’s 2014 to 2015 fiscal year, did show an increase in revenues for some of the system’s funding sources: a 3 percent increase in property tax revenues and a 6 percent increase in sales tax revenues.

Wilson said that while having increased revenue has been helpful, those gains are often offset by increases in costs associated with being a rapidly growing school system.

“Our costs have continued to go up and we’ve still continued to add a substantial number of students every year,” Wilson said. “If you look in 2009 at per pupil expenditure and you look at where we are today, we’re still $1,000 less per student than what we were spending then.”

Board members said they were pleased to hear the results of the audit and praised Wilson and his staff for their hard work in assisting the examiners.

Board Member Norm Moore said he hoped the audit results would help calm some of the negative opinions that some county residents have been expressing against the system.

“This audit report is an example that shows an independent verification of the good work the system does,” Moore said. “When people want to be critical, they need to look at the facts. When they look at the facts, they’re showing we’re doing a good job. In a school system, especially a big one like this, it’s difficult to get an opinion without a modification, but we’ve continued to do that.”

The 2015 audit report is available online at bcbe.org and at examiners.alabama.gov.