An analysis for North Myrtle Beach residents
Three Words the City Hoped You’d Skip
“After restatement and corrections” — and what North Myrtle Beach won’t audit
On a single slide in the City of North Myrtle Beach’s 2024 financial audit sits a phrase that explains the unease running through recent budget meetings. The General Fund balance, it reads, decreased $1.3 million to $28.3 million — “after restatement and corrections” [City of North Myrtle Beach 2024 Audit, 2026]. In government accounting, a restatement is no routine update; it is a formal admission that figures previously reported to the public were wrong and had to be redone.
That quiet concession is the heart of what residents are now calling the city’s “new math,” and it has them asking a direct question: if the old books were wrong, will taxpayers ever see the real ones?
What a restatement admits
When auditors restate and correct numbers, the prior version did not hold up. That matches what city leaders have said aloud. City Manager Ryan Fabbri has repeatedly signaled that the way North Myrtle Beach accounted for its money in the past is not how it will be done going forward, with the tone of his remarks pointing — without saying so outright — toward the previous administration and weak oversight.
The transition gives that framing weight: Fabbri’s predecessor, Mike Mahaney, was forced out in late 2024, and top finance and public works posts have since turned over [Post and Courier, 2025]. The “new math,” in short, is the city’s own description of correcting the old.
The numbers, and the good news
Fairness requires the full picture, because the same audit carries genuinely reassuring figures. Of the corrected $28.3 million balance, $421,000 is nonspendable, $1.2 million is restricted for public safety, and $26.6 million is unassigned — the flexible reserve [City of North Myrtle Beach 2024 Audit, 2026].
That $26.6 million equals 36 percent of the city’s 2024 actual expenditures, against the 16.7 percent minimum — roughly two months of operating costs — recommended by the Government Finance Officers Association [GFOA, 2024]. North Myrtle Beach holds more than double the recommended cushion.
By the profession’s own yardstick, the city is financially strong. A restatement, then, is a credibility problem rather than a solvency one — but “we’re not broke” does not answer “what happened?”
When claims outrun the ledger
That gap between confident statements and verifiable numbers showed up again at the budget hearing, in the most expensive decision on the table. Much of the case for borrowing $18 million to expand the Aquatic & Fitness Center rests on childcare and day-camp demand, and Recreation
Director Matt Gibbons told the room that childcare is the center’s second-largest revenue source, behind only memberships. The budget doesn’t bear that out. The center reports just three revenue lines — membership fees of $1.96 million, “other fees” of $664,000, and sales of $80,000 — with no childcare line at all; the children’s programs appear only as a $464,000 expense in the Activities Division [City of North Myrtle Beach FY2027 Budget, 2026]. Compounding the concern, membership revenue, the acknowledged top source, is budgeted to fall 18 percent in the same year the city wants to borrow to expand. It is the restatement problem in miniature: a claim from the dais the numbers underneath cannot confirm.
The legal line that proves the point
The clearest evidence that old budgets understated reality sits in the legal department. For the coming year, its professional-services line — outside attorneys and litigation — doubles from $750,000 to $1.5 million [City of North Myrtle Beach FY2027 Budget, 2026]. Asked why, Fabbri’s answer was essentially that the old figures weren’t real and the new ones are; the budget agrees in writing, calling the jump a move “to more accurately reflect actual expenditures over the past four years” [City of North Myrtle Beach FY2027 Budget, 2026]. So the city spent roughly $1.5 million annually while budgeting half that. The correction is welcome — and it sharpens the obvious question: if legal costs were understated by that much for that long, what else was, and how would anyone know without looking back?
Will residents see the real books?
Many of them have asked for exactly that: a forensic audit, which unlike a standard annual audit digs into how misstatements happened and who was responsible. Fabbri pushed back, saying such an audit would be very expensive and that nothing nefarious was going on, so none was needed. Both points invite scrutiny. Cost is a reason to scope a review, not to deny the public a look — from a city that found $18 million for a fitness center. And “nothing nefarious” is the very conclusion a forensic audit exists to prove or disprove; asking residents to accept the city’s word about its own restated books asks them to trust the thing they want verified.
The bottom line
“After restatement and corrections” is easy to skip past. It shouldn’t be. It is North Myrtle Beach conceding, in auditors’ language, that its past reporting was wrong enough to require formal revision — while its leadership hints at who is to blame and declines the deeper review residents want. The reassuring truth is that the corrected reserves are healthy. The unresolved truth is everything the restatement implies but does not explain. New math is welcome if it is more honest math — but honest math invites inspection rather than pricing it out of reach. Until the city shows taxpayers the full reconciliation, the real question isn’t whether it can balance the books. It’s whether it is listening.
Further Reading
- City of North Myrtle Beach, 2024 Financial Audit — General Fund presentation (fund balance and reserve slides).
- City of North Myrtle Beach FY2027 Proposed Budget — Legal Department (account 01-5-242) and Aquatic & Fitness Center revenue lines.
- The Post and Courier, “North Myrtle Beach chooses Ryan Fabbri as next city manager” (June 6, 2025): https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/news/north-myrtle-beach-hires-new-city-manager-sc/article_bab24d44-0ee7-439b-8bb3-634390a4e8f7.html
- Government Finance Officers Association, “Fund Balance Guidelines for the General Fund” (recommended minimum of ~16.7%, two months of expenditures): https://www.gfoa.org/materials/fund-balance-guidelines-for-the-general-fund
- Association of Certified Fraud Examiners — overview of forensic audits and how they differ from standard financial audits: https://www.acfe.com/
