City of Cairo, Georgia

Overview

Cairo's auditor, Valenti, Rackley & Associates, LLC (Valdosta), issued an unmodified opinion: the FY2025 financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the City's financial position as of June 30, 2025. The City reports two kinds of activity: governmental activities (public safety, public works, general government and the like) and business-type activities (the Water and Sewer, Electric, Landfill and other enterprise funds). A discretely presented component unit, the City of Cairo Development Authority, is reported separately in the audit and is not included in the figures on this page.

The headline story of FY2025 is a transfer, not operations. Governmental activities ran an $887,439 deficit before transfers, and business-type activities ran a $1,988,971 surplus before transfers — then $5,115,359 was transferred from the enterprise funds to governmental activities, flipping the results: governmental net position rose $4,227,920 while business-type net position fell $3,126,388. The City as a whole gained $1,101,532 in net position.

Looking ahead, the audit flags four known pressures: about $1.8 million in prior-period interfund receivables owed to the Landfill Fund; a two-year interruption of SGGSA franchise revenue distributions; the expiration of ARPA funding (fully allocated, no further funding expected); and rising liability-insurance premiums. The City held its rollback millage rate with no property-tax increase for the current budget year.

Source: City of Cairo FY2025 Financial Report, Independent Auditor's Report (April 20, 2026) and Management's Discussion and Analysis — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

At a glance — FY2025 audited

Source: FY2025 audit, Management's Discussion and Analysis (Tables 2 and 3) and Governmental Funds statements — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

Net position — June 30, 2025

Net position is what remains after liabilities and deferred inflows are subtracted from assets and deferred outflows. Each column below sums exactly to its total, and the year-over-year walk checks: $58,168,454 (June 30, 2024) + $1,101,532 (FY2025 change) = $59,269,986.

The governmental unrestricted deficit (−$1,098,783) is an improvement from −$1,987,901 a year earlier. The audit attributes it to long-term liabilities (including net pension obligations), capital assets financed from current and prior resources, and restricted resources that cannot offset general obligations — and states it does not indicate an immediate liquidity concern. Governmental restricted net position ($8,992,427) consists primarily of resources constrained for capital projects, revolving loan programs, and cemetery maintenance and tourism activities. Business-type restricted net position ($1,488,448) is primarily associated with electric power generation.

Source: Management's Discussion and Analysis, Table 2 (Condensed Statement of Net Position) — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

General Fund — FY2025 actuals vs. budget

The General Fund is the City's chief operating fund. It took in $5,774,396 and spent $9,206,755 — an operating deficiency of $3,432,359 — then received $4,166,594 in transfers in, for a net fund-balance increase of $734,235. The fund began the year at −$102,213 and ended at $632,022. Read the budget comparison with care: the final amended budget equals actuals on every line (variance $0 throughout), so "on budget" here means the budget was amended to match results, not that results tracked the original budget.

Revenues — $5,774,396

Expenditures — $9,206,755

Budget vs. actual

Final budget and actuals are identical for revenues ($5,774,396), expenditures ($9,206,755) and transfers in ($4,166,594) — variance $0 on every line of the budgetary comparison schedule. No department or function exceeded its appropriation (the audit's Notes to Budget report "None" for expenditures over appropriations).

Fund balance walk

That ending balance breaks down as nonspendable inventories $36,573 + restricted for public services $502,849 + unassigned $92,600 = $632,022. The unassigned balance — the part available for general discretionary use — is $92,600, which the audit itself calls relatively modest, reflecting limited flexibility to absorb unexpected costs or revenue shortfalls.

Source: Governmental Funds Statement of Revenues, Expenditures, and Changes in Fund Balances, and General Fund Budgetary Comparison Schedule — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

All governmental funds — FY2025

Beyond the General Fund, the City reports the ARPA Fund as a major fund and all other governmental funds in aggregate. Every row below sums across to its total, and the balance walk checks: beginning balances $6,360,917 + net change $2,739,648 = ending balances $9,100,565.

The other governmental funds did the heavy capital lifting: of their $3,509,943 in expenditures, $2,916,566 was capital outlays and $593,357 was debt service, against $3,538,862 of intergovernmental revenue. The ARPA Fund took in $253,982 (intergovernmental $227,774 + investment income $26,208), spent nothing, and transferred out its full $253,982, ending the year at $0 — consistent with the audit's statement that ARPA funding is fully allocated.

Fund balance composition — $9,100,565

About $8.97 million of the $9.10 million — 98.6% — is restricted for specific purposes, leaving very little discretionary balance. Total governmental-fund assets of $11,430,559 equal total liabilities of $2,329,994 plus fund balances of $9,100,565.

Source: Governmental Funds Balance Sheet and Statement of Revenues, Expenditures, and Changes in Fund Balances — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

Enterprise funds — FY2025

Cairo's business-type activities are its utility and enterprise operations: the Water and Sewer, Electric, and Landfill funds as major funds, plus nonmajor enterprise funds. At the government-wide level they were operationally self-supporting — revenues covered expenses — but transfers out of $5,115,359 to governmental activities turned an operating surplus into an overall decline in net position.

Business-type net position fell from $38,918,704 to $35,792,316 (check: $38,918,704 − $3,126,388 = $35,792,316), composed of net investment in capital assets $29,682,944 + restricted $1,488,448 + unrestricted $4,620,924. The audit's qualitative read: the Electric Fund is the primary revenue-generating enterprise with strong operating results, while the Water and Sewer Fund and Landfill Fund reported operating losses, reflecting infrastructure and environmental cost pressures. Unrestricted business-type net position fell 29.96% during the year, which the audit attributes mainly to the use of investment reserves to support operations, plus landfill closure and postclosure obligations.

Gap disclosed: per-fund enterprise figures (individual revenues, expenses, and net position for the Electric, Water and Sewer, and Landfill funds) are not shown on this page. The proprietary-fund statement pages in the source PDF did not extract cleanly — columns interleave in the extracted text — so individual fund figures could not be verified against statement totals and were left out rather than guessed.

Source: Management's Discussion and Analysis, Table 3 (Condensed Statement of Activities) and enterprise-fund discussion — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

Debt & capital assets

Total liabilities fell $5,378,210 (25.85%) during FY2025, from $20,805,602 to $15,427,392 — driven by accounts payable falling from $4.06 million to $1.91 million as prior-year obligations were settled, and by the net pension liability falling from about $3.2 million to about $1.4 million on actuarial valuation changes. Long-term liabilities include bonds and notes payable, compensated absences, net pension liabilities, and landfill closure and postclosure obligations.

Capital assets, net of depreciation

Capital assets cover land, buildings and improvements, infrastructure (roads, water/sewer systems and the like), and machinery and equipment. Governmental capital assets rose 9.36% on continued infrastructure investment; business-type capital assets fell 4.91% as depreciation exceeded additions. Disclosure: the audit's MD&A Table 2 prints a total capital-assets figure of $49,532,396, which is $869 above the sum of its own governmental and business-type components ($49,531,527) — so no combined total is presented as sum-checked here; the two components above are the figures used. The audit's total-assets figure ($74,812,592) does sum-check from its components.

Questions about the report itself may be addressed to the Finance Department, City of Cairo, Georgia, 119 N Broad St, Cairo, GA 39828, or by phone at 229-377-1722, per the audit's "Contacting the City's Financial Management" notice.

Source: Management's Discussion and Analysis, Table 2 and Capital Asset and Debt Administration section — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

Sources & notes

• Only source used: City of Cairo, Georgia, Financial Report for the year ended June 30, 2025 (audited; Valenti, Rackley & Associates, LLC; auditor's report dated April 20, 2026). Read the audit (PDF, UGA TED portal).
• Sum checks: every breakdown table on this page was added up before publishing; each shown total equals the sum of its shown parts, except for the two audit-internal discrepancies disclosed on this page: (1) the MD&A's government-wide governmental revenue total ($9,740,148) is $1 above the governmental-funds statement total ($9,740,147) — the fund-statement figure is used in the funds sections and the government-wide figure in the enterprise section, each in its own statement's context; (2) the MD&A Table 2 capital-assets total is $869 above the sum of its components (see Debt & capital).
• What is missing: this page has no per-fund enterprise breakdown (Electric, Water and Sewer, Landfill individually), no component-unit (Development Authority) figures, and no population, staffing, or service-level figures — the proprietary and component-unit statement pages did not extract cleanly enough to sum-check, and none of those figures were invented. A cleaner source extract would be needed to add them.
• City palette: no high- or medium-confidence City of Cairo palette was on file, so this page uses the neutral Peach State Pulse dark-glass theme rather than a city color.

← Back to Peach State Pulse