Jones County, Georgia

Overview

Jones County's auditor, Mauldin & Jenkins, LLC (Macon, Georgia), issued an unmodified opinion: the FY2025 financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the County's financial position as of August 31, 2025. The Jones County Board of Health — the discretely presented component unit — was audited by other auditors, and the opinion on it rests on their report. The County reports governmental activities (general government, judicial, public safety, public works and the like) and one business-type activity, the Water and Sewer Fund.

In FY2025 the County as a whole added $1,679,457 to its net position — but the two sides moved in opposite directions: governmental activities fell $2,156,177 while business-type activities rose $3,835,634. The governmental decline follows a restatement that cut beginning net position by $2,414,030 for error correction ($1,897,515 governmental, $516,515 business-type); on a restated basis the County began the year at $66,365,096 and ended at $68,044,553.

Context from the audit's Management's Discussion and Analysis (not financial-statement figures): the County tax digest rose from $775,472,539 to $870,433,013; the net maintenance-and-operations millage rate in the unincorporated area was 14.700; and the County unemployment rate was 4.1% (Georgia Department of Labor estimates, revised November 2025 data).

Source: Jones County FY2025 Financial Report, Independent Auditor's Report and Management's Discussion and Analysis — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

At a glance — FY2025 audited

Source: FY2025 audit, Statement of Net Position and fund statements — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

Net position — August 31, 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. The Board of Health component unit ($161,929 net position) is reported separately in the audit and is not included in these primary-government totals.

Restricted detail (sums to the $10,148,750 above): capital projects $8,869,951, economic development $453,239, public safety $386,333, debt service $313,437, judicial $73,874, federal programs $51,916.

Governmental activities — FY2025 revenues, $32,574,171

Against governmental expenses of $30,852,189, that is $1,721,982 before transfers; net transfers out of $3,878,159 (to business-type activities) produce the $2,156,177 decrease in governmental net position. Governmental expenses by function: general government $9,567,747, public safety $10,657,241, public works $4,404,810, judicial $2,193,209, culture and recreation $2,158,697, housing and development $818,279, health and welfare $356,080, interest on long-term debt $696,126 — these sum to $30,852,189.

Source: Statement of Net Position (pp. 15–16) and Statement of Activities (pp. 17–18) — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

General Fund — FY2025

The General Fund is the County's chief operating fund. It spent $355,059 more than it took in, but other financing sources of $504,083 (leases $1,108,055 and sale-of-asset proceeds $63,760, less transfers out of $667,732) more than covered the gap, so the fund balance grew by $149,024.

Revenues — $26,443,714

Taxes detail: property $15,295,907 + sales $2,973,469 + other $2,508,258 = $20,777,634. (Fund-basis tax figures differ slightly from the government-wide tax figures in the Net position section because the two statements use different bases of accounting.)

Expenditures — $26,798,773

Fund balance walk

Ending-balance composition (sums to $18,132,500): unassigned $15,800,164, restricted for capital projects $1,644,951, nonspendable prepaid items $593,818, nonspendable inventories $93,567. The audit's liquidity measure: unassigned fund balance is 59% of General Fund expenditures and total fund balance is 68% of the same (the audit's own rounded percentages; $15,800,164 ÷ $26,798,773 ≈ 59.0%).

Against the original budget

The audit's budget-and-actual statement shows final-budget totals equal to actuals (variance $0), so no final-budget variance is reportable; the comparison below is against the original budget — the same comparison the Management's Discussion and Analysis uses. Original-budget revenues were $25,938,330, so actual revenues beat the original budget by $505,384; original-budget expenditures were $28,993,767, so actual spending came in $2,194,994 under the original budget.

Source: General Fund Statement of Revenues, Expenditures, and Changes in Fund Balances — Budget and Actual (pp. 28–30) and Governmental Funds Balance Sheet (pp. 19–22) — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

All governmental funds — FY2025

Beyond the General Fund, the County reports the American Rescue Plan Act Grant Fund, the 2021 SPLOST Capital Projects Fund, the Public Facilities Authority, and other (nonmajor) governmental funds. Every row and column below sums to its total.

Combined, the governmental funds spent $211,916 more than they took in on operations (revenues $32,477,079 minus expenditures $32,688,995), and after $2,669,338 of net other-financing uses the fund balances fell $2,881,254 — from $36,818,501 to $33,937,247. The Public Facilities Authority's $3,989,868 decrease (a $716,171 operating deficiency plus $3,273,697 of net transfers out, including the $4,400,754 transferred to the Water and Sewer Fund) accounts for most of that decline.

Source: Governmental Funds Statement of Revenues, Expenditures, and Changes in Fund Balances (pp. 23–26) — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

Water & Sewer enterprise — FY2025

The Water and Sewer Fund is the County's only proprietary fund and its business-type activity. It lost money on operations, then grew its net position through capital contributions and net transfers in (largely from the Public Facilities Authority and the General Fund).

Operating revenues — $3,214,584

Operating expenses — $3,625,584

From operating loss to change in net position

Unrestricted net position of the Water and Sewer Fund was $2,008,167 at year-end, up $1,130,681 from 2024; the rest is net investment in capital assets ($22,324,043).

Source: Proprietary Fund Statements of Net Position and of Revenues, Expenses, and Changes in Fund Net Position (pp. 32–34) — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

Debt & capital assets

Governmental capital assets of $39,935,890 comprise nondepreciable assets $11,514,277, depreciable assets net of depreciation $26,360,009, and lease assets $2,061,604. Business-type capital assets of $26,540,879 comprise nondepreciable $12,726,057 and depreciable net $13,814,822. Major projects still incomplete at year-end included the Union Hill Bridge, the Sun Valley–Griswoldville sewer force main, the Graham Road / Highway 49 project, the government center renovation, the elevated water tank, and the Henderson Road water treatment plant; completed projects included Homer Roberts, flock cameras, and Sand Creek phase work.

Long-term debt outstanding — $33,895,220

Governmental long-term debt is $30,667,334 and business-type long-term debt is $3,227,886; those two sum to the $33,895,220 above. The County closed its Overland Way landfill in 1996; one year of postclosure monitoring remained at August 31, 2025.

Questions about the report itself may be addressed to the Finance Department, Jones County, P.O. Box 1359, Gray, Georgia 31032, per the audit's "Requests for Information" notice.

Source: Management's Discussion and Analysis (capital assets and long-term debt, pp. 12–14) and Statement of Net Position — audited FY2025 report (PDF).

Sources & notes

• Only source used: Jones County, Georgia, Financial Report for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2025 (audited; Mauldin & Jenkins, LLC). Read the audit (PDF, UGA TED portal).
• Not used: the County's FY2026 budget worksheet on the county site — not labeled adopted and not a budget book — and any other document. No figure on this page comes from it.
• Sum checks: every breakdown table on this page was added up before publishing; each shown total equals the sum of its shown parts.
• Audit narrative vs. statements (statement figures used throughout): the Management's Discussion and Analysis text states a General Fund total fund balance of $19,955,478 and unassigned balance of $15,666,343, but the audited Balance Sheet shows $18,132,500 total (unassigned $15,800,164) — $19,955,477 is the General Fund's total assets, not its fund balance. The MD&A also states combined governmental fund balances of $33,937,246 (statements: $33,937,247) and governmental net position of $43,712,342 in one passage (statements: $43,712,343). All are $1 differences except the General Fund narrative, where the statement figure is used.
• Excluded from county totals: the discretely presented Board of Health component unit (net position $161,929) and fiduciary custodial funds (net position $1,309,531, held for others) are reported separately in the audit and are not the County's own resources, so neither appears in the totals above.
• What is missing: this page has no current-year budget, no FY2026 actuals, and no population, staffing, or service-level figures — the FY2025 audit does not supply them in a form used here, and none were invented. A newer verified document would be needed to update this dashboard.
• County palette: no high- or medium-confidence Jones County palette was on file, so this page uses the neutral Peach State Pulse dark-glass theme rather than a county color.

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