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STATE OF NEW YORK THOMAS P. DiNAPOLI OFFICE OF THE STATE COMPTROLLER ELLIOTT AUERBACH COMPTROLLER 110 STATE STREET DEPUTY COMPTROLLER ALBANY, NEW YORK 12236 DIVISION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY Tel: (518) 474-4037 Fax: (518) 486-6479 May 2021 Mr. Wayne Clark, Supervisor Members of the Town Board Town of Elma 1600 Bowen Rd Elma, NY 14059 Report Number: S9-21-8 Dear Supervisor Clark and Members of the Town Board: The COVID-19 pandemic (pandemic) has had various levels of impact on the financial operations of local governments across New York State. Some local governments have seen little to no impact on their financial operations, while others have seen more significant impacts due to reductions and/or increases to their revenues and/or expenditures. This has led to some local governments having to reduce or eliminate some services and temporarily or permanently reduce staff positions. In addition, some local officials have decided to delay capital projects, which could result in future delays to other projects to maintain and improve local government infrastructures. The pandemic has also created a difficult environment for officials to develop annual budgets given the unknowns of future financial impacts. The pandemic increases the need for local officials to more closely monitor their budgeted estimates for revenues and expenditures against actual results and modify their budgetary estimates accordingly, when warranted, during the course of their fiscal year. To assess whether local officials adequately considered the impact of the pandemic on their financial operations while developing their 2021 fiscal year budgets, our office conducted reviews of 20 adopted budgets of various counties, cities, towns and villages across the State. The Town of Elma (Town) is one of the local governments included in our review. The objective of the review was to provide an independent evaluation of certain aspects of the adopted budget. Our review addressed the following question related to the Town’s adopted budget for the 2021 fiscal year: