by Michele Catahay

Guam - The Office of Public Accountability says independent auditors have rendered an unqualified or clean opinion for the Guam Community College. GCC closed Fiscal Year 2010 with a $4.4 million increase in net assets, a 33% improvement from last year's increase. According to the report, this is mainly due to the increases in Pell Grants and other federal grants, along with increased enrollment.

GCC has been able to maintain its low-risk status for the tenth consecutive fiscal year. President Mary Okada told KUAM News, "We're pretty happy that we have a solid process in place as far as procurement, and that we're able to have a clean audit once again. We do have an increase in net assets because the college has been doing significant investments on capital projects. With the completion of the library and several capital projects, of course it adds to the assets that the college has."

According to Okada, this past year alone, they've been able to work on a number of projects to include the learning resource center, and as of this month, the project is 20% complete. In addition, contracts are being awarded for capital improvement projects.

In the meantime, while there were no deficiencies considered as weaknesses, the auditors did identify some problems. "We do have a fixed asset inventory process that is in place and so there was a recommendation that we get pre-numbered tags as opposed to those that are not pre-numbered. But even if we're tagging the assets and we know where the assets are, we need an upgrade to the process that we currently have," said Okada.

While the report says GCC needs to work on its integrated systems, Okada says the audit provides insight on what is needed to make necessary upgrades. "We're now seeing that we're able to produce and have audited financial statements more readily available for the college so we can take the next steps in moving forward in our planning process," concluded the president.