ST. MARTIN PARISH — St. Martinville officials say the city’s latest audit shows a dramatic improvement in financial oversight and internal controls, cutting major findings from 12 to five and reducing overall recommendations from 26 to 14. Mayor Jason Willis attributes much of the progress to the work of the city’s new chief financial officer, Katy Bujard, who joined the administration several months into the fiscal year.
Speaking about the shift, Willis said, “The fiscal year started in July she came in November, a lot of the findings were bleeding over form the year prior, but once she came in, she hit the ground running.”
According to Willis, Bujard approached the cleanup strategically, “Katy came in, she sat down we looked at them and said ok, we gonna do a little bit at a time, which ones you think you can do, like I say, catch the low hanging fruit first,” he said. That work involved updating outdated signature policies, cleaning up old accounts, and standardizing vendor approval processes—changes that allowed the city to correct seven of the 14 recommendations identified by auditors.
The mayor said the most significant improvement came from a financial strategy the city had not used before: establishing multiple savings accounts to preserve leftover monthly revenue. “ whatever we have left over—five thousand, seven, 10, 15—we pick which account we wanna save it in,” Willis said. The city uses those accounts to build reserves needed for grant matches, giving St. Martinville more flexibility to pursue state and federal funding opportunities.
Willis said the changes also strengthened the city’s financial stability. St. Martinville’s reserves—the number of days the city could operate if revenue stopped—rose from 13 days to 77. While two audit findings remain uncorrectable due to staffing limitations that prevent the separation of financial duties or the preparation of in-house audit statements, Willis said the city continues to make progress on everything else still listed by auditors. “That’s just saving, getting rid of these findings and other recommendations… you just have to chip at it a little bit at a time,” he said.
Mayor Willis says he expects even fewer findings next year, noting that new procedures, updated software, and added financial oversight are now in place as St. Martinville continues efforts to strengthen its internal operations and long-term fiscal health.
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