Rhode Island
$865K Later, Still No Audit: Woonsocket Is the Only RI Municipality Missing Its 2024 Books—So Its Leaking High School Gets Barrels, Not a Roof
What happened
At the Woonsocket School Committee meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 14, member Lynn Kapiskas put the high school roof on the agenda and explained why nobody can fix it. According to Uprise RI’s recap of the meeting recording, she said repair estimates “started around the $30 million range” and are now “closer to the $60 million range.” The roof was part of the district’s original school-construction request to the state, she said, but it was cut as the request shrank. The capital plan doesn’t have the money. And the city can’t float a bond for the roof without completed audits, which she called a City Council problem, not a School Committee one. She said she doesn’t see the roof being replaced “anytime soon, short of a windfall from somewhere.”
In the meantime, the district’s facilities report said staff patch leaks as best they can. Barrels, hoses and caution tape stay in one area of the high school because of repeated leaks and slip-and-fall concerns. At the Sept. 23 meeting, a parent told the committee the same section had been leaking for what she believed was a second year.
The audits Kapiskas mentioned have been missing for a long time:
• FY2024 (year ended June 30, 2024): due to the state by Dec. 31, 2024. As of Oct. 17, 2026, the R.I. Division of Municipal Finance has posted FY2024 audits for 38 of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns. Woonsocket is the only one missing.
• FY2025: due Dec. 31, 2025. It isn’t posted either. Woonsocket is one of seven municipalities without a posted FY2025 audit.
• FY2023: due Dec. 31, 2023. It finally appears on the state’s site in a September 2025 upload. In its Sept. 9, 2025 report to the General Assembly, the Auditor General wrote that Woonsocket “has not filed timely audited financial statements in the last five years.”
The delay has cost money. At a special City Council meeting on Aug. 24, 2026, Councilor James Cournoyer put the 18-month total paid to two outside firms at about $865,000: $553,000 to CBIZ, the audit firm, and $310,000 to CLA, an accounting firm hired to help city staff. With outstanding bills, he said, it’s “close to $900,000.” “We got an FY23 audit. I’m not sure what else we got, to be very honest with you,” he said. Council President Daniel Gendron said the council had authorized $70,000 for CLA in two $35,000 votes. Spending had reached $264,300. “I was shocked when I realized we had exceeded the $70,000,” he said. “CLA is crushing us.” At the same meeting, officials said a $100,000 state technical-assistance grant meant to help the Finance Department lapsed unused, because the finance director didn’t have time to direct the consultants. Cournoyer also warned the city may face a “potentially meaningful” FY2026 deficit, though he stressed that more work was needed to confirm it.
Wall Street has already reacted. Moody’s withdrew Woonsocket’s bond ratings in October 2024 and Fitch withdrew its ratings in July 2025, both over the missing FY2023 audit. S&P lowered its rating on the city’s water bonds, Rhode Island Current reported. The Auditor General wrote that the agencies pulled the ratings “until more current audited financial statements are available.”
Original reporting
Read the underlying sources:
Uprise RI — Woonsocket Officials Say $100,000 Finance Grant Lapsed Unused (Aug. 25, 2026)
R.I. Division of Municipal Finance — 2025 Municipal Audits
WPRI — Woonsocket has bond rating revoked by Moody’s (Oct. 2024)
Related Virtue Forge briefing — Woonsocket’s $2,925 tax bill on a $3.8M building (Oct. 2026)
Virtue Forge commentary
Producing an audit is about as basic as government gets: count the money, have an independent firm check the count, and file it within six months. Thirty-eight Rhode Island cities and towns, from Providence down to Foster and Exeter, got their 2024 books done. Woonsocket, the state’s sixth-largest city, is still missing its 2024 books almost two years after the deadline, and its 2025 books too. With no audited statements, the city has no credit rating to borrow against for the fix, so the high school gets water barrels and caution tape.
A private company that couldn’t show its lenders audited books would lose its credit, then its customers, then its management. Woonsocket has lost its credit, but its customers can’t leave without moving, and the taxing power doesn’t lapse. So taxpayers pay twice. First, close to $900,000 in outside fees, including $264,300 to a firm the council authorized to receive $70,000. Spending nearly four times what elected officials approved, with no vote, is a governance failure of its own. Second, they pay in deferred repairs that get more expensive every winter. If Kapiskas’s estimates are right, the roof bill has already roughly doubled.
Then there’s the $100,000 grant that expired because no one had time to use it. Cournoyer made the unglamorous point that grants are not free money: the city fronts general-fund cash, does the paperwork, adds audit work, and sometimes can’t bill the costs back. He described an announcement with “a pat on the back and a press release with a big check,” followed by the bookkeeping nobody photographs. A city that can’t close its books shouldn’t be chasing more programs to administer. Competence comes before ambition.
What to watch: whether the FY2024 and FY2025 audits are filed before the FY2026 audit comes due Dec. 31, 2026; whether Cournoyer’s feared FY2026 deficit materializes; whether the Finance Department positions the council authorized in March get filled; whether Moody’s and Fitch restore ratings once audits arrive; and whether anyone running for Woonsocket City Council on Nov. 3 puts the books, and the roof, at the top of their agenda.