Sarasota County Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2019

25 INDEPENDENT AUDITORS’ REPORT Honorable Board of County Commissioners Sarasota County, Florida Report on the Financial Statements We have audited the accompanying financial statements of the governmental activities, the business- type activities, each major fund, and the aggregate remaining fund information of Sarasota County, Florida (County), as of and for the year ended September 30, 2019, and the related notes to the financial statements, which collectively comprise the entity’s basic financial statements as listed in the table of contents. We have also audited the financial statements of the Englewood Community Redevelopment Agency (a non-major special revenue fund) which is presented as supplementary information in the accompanying combining and individual fund financial statements as of and for the year ended September 30, 2019, as listed in the table of contents. Management’s Responsibility for the Financial Statements Management is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of these financial statements in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America; this includes the design, implementation, and maintenance of internal control relevant to the preparation and fair presentation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error. Auditors’ Responsibility Our responsibility is to express opinions on these financial statements based on our audit. We conducted our audit in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America and the standards applicable to financial audits contained in Government Auditing Standards , issued by the Comptroller General of the United States. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free from material misstatement. An audit involves performing procedures to obtain audit evidence about the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The procedures selected depend on the auditors’ judgment, including the assessment of the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to fraud or error. In making those risk assessments, the auditor considers internal control relevant to the entity’s preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the entity’s internal control. Accordingly, we express no such opinion. An audit also includes evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of significant accounting estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our audit opinions.