State law requires quarterly financial reports. In June 2025, the Troy City Council received one for the first time in 18 months. The report covered Q1 2025. The gap ran from early 2024 through mid-2025, a period during which the city had no permanent comptroller and spent more than $260,000 on outside accounting firms to keep the books.
The Q1 report was not reassuring. By the end of March, the city had already burned through more than 40 percent of its annual staff overtime budget.
Why the Books Were Hard to Keep
The city’s financial software, KVS, runs as two separate systems: one where transactions are entered and a second where those transactions must be manually processed into the ledger. Entries regularly landed in wrong accounts or wrong funds. The previous comptroller had managed this through manual clearing accounts. When he left, no one else knew how it worked.
The problem compounded through 2024. By the time Michael McNeff joined as the city’s third comptroller in 18 months in July 2025, the city was running more than 50 separate cash accounts. Every account required its own reconciliation.
The 2024 audit by the Bonadio Group, presented to the council in November 2025, identified two material weaknesses: the general ledger was not reconciled on time, and cash reconciliations were not completed on time. The management letter also flagged the excess number of accounts and the misclassification of some federal grant pass-throughs.
McNeff began closing accounts immediately. By November 2025, he had closed roughly a dozen. New financial software was coming in 2026.
The Adverse Opinion
The government-wide financial statements carried an adverse opinion. Bonadio Group auditor Walther told the council it was the same opinion Troy had received for more than 25 years because the city does not depreciate its capital assets. Correcting it would require a comprehensive inventory of every building, water tower, and piece of infrastructure the city owns, valued at historical cost and then depreciated to present.
“Adverse is as bad as it gets,” Walther said, while noting it was a pre-existing structural issue.
What the Council Saw by November
At the November 20, 2025 Finance Meeting, McNeff presented the Q3 2025 report, the first quarterly presentation he had made since joining. General fund revenues through September totaled approximately $61 million. Expenditures totaled approximately $57.1 million, roughly 70 to 75 percent of the annual budget through three quarters. Sales tax was running about 4.5 percent above the same period in 2024. Fire department salaries were $1 million under year-over-year.
The Q3 report was the first sign of stabilization. The fixes were still months out.
Sources: WAMC, WAMC May 2024, Troy City Council Finance Meeting, November 20, 2025 (transcript)