Is Mayor Dwight C. Jones saving too much money while starving City Hall of the monetary resources needed to provide services to Richmond residents?

That question is starting to emerge as City Council members review the long delayed and finally completed audit of city finances for fiscal year 2014. That’s the period that began July 1, 2013, and ended June 30, 2014.

Richmond’s No. 2 person in charge, Chief Administrative Officer Selena Cuffee-Glenn, presented to City Council on Monday the audit report — known as the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) — that was due Nov. 30, 2014, for completion.

While the city’s 2015 CAFR is awaiting completion, Ms. Cuffee-Glenn credits her new chief financial officer, Lenora Reid, and her financial team for overcoming previous hurdles and getting the 2014 report finished.

One item sure to attract City Council’s attention is the amount shifted to a rainy day fund, particularly after council received a tongue-lashing from the administration for shifting $9 million from city departments to support academic improvement in Richmond Public Schools for the current 2016 fiscal year.

According to a separate report that Ms. Cuffee-Glenn sent to council several weeks ago, the city is reducing the number of potholes it can fill and eliminating alley maintenance because of lack of money. The CAO also advised that Richmond Police could have less money to hire new recruits to fill vacancies and the Department of Public Works might have to cut back on leaf collection in areas of the city because of a funding shortfall due to council’s action.

However, in that report on the impact of council’s budget on services, Ms. Cuffee-Glenn did not mention that the city might have millions of dollars more — possibly up to $14 million — in the rainy day fund than the city requires.

Council apparently was unaware of the fact when it was wrestling with the 2016 budget in late April and early May because the 2014 CAFR report had not been completed.

The report provides evidence that money might not be as tight as the administration has stated.

According to the report, the administration ended the 2014 fiscal year with $80.4 million in the unassigned fund balance, also known as the rainy day and emergency fund.

The $80.4 million represents “12.1 percent of budgeted expenditures and transfers,” the CAFR reported, or $14 million more than required by city policy.

The city only requires a minimum of 10 percent of expenditures and transfers to be placed in the rainy day fund, which in fiscal year 2014 would have been $66.4 million.

The push to keep the rainy day fund balance high shows up in other areas of the CAFR. The report shows that despite the fattened account, then-CAO Byron C. Marshall kept putting the squeeze on departments during 2014 to reduce spending.

With revenues falling short of projections, he quietly imposed limits on departmental hiring and spending in seeking to prevent a deficit in the operating budget, the money used to pay for parks, recreation, tree-trimming, the courts, the jail and a host of other services and operations.

Evidence of Mr. Marshall putting the squeeze on expenditures emerges from the columns of figures in the 2014 report comparing the amount budgeted to actual spending.

The bottom line: 24 departments finished the year spending less than their appropriation. That includes the police department, which spent $83 million or $2 million less than its $85 million appropriation.

The result: Mr. Marshall, whom the mayor dismissed in September 2014, reduced city spending by $9.3 million.

That allowed the city essentially to keep its operating budget balanced, according to the CAFR. The report shows the city took in $644.5 million in revenue and spent $645.2 million, with the small difference made up through dipping into other reserves.

Ms. Cuffee-Glenn defended Mr. Marshall’s approach. In an interview Tuesday, she said that the CAFR shows that Mr. Marshall was making sure departments were “operating efficiently,” which she also is doing. Just because money is appropriated, she said, doesn’t mean it has to be spent.

She also defended packing extra money into the rainy day fund, citing the unexpected damage that Hurricane Joaquin and related storms recently inflicted on South Carolina and the big costs facing cities and counties there.

“Our financial advisers encourage us to try to save up to 20 percent,” she said. That’s the kind of savings level that well-managed communities strive for, Chief Financial Officer Reid said, pointing to Henrico and Chesterfield counties.

Having a large rainy day fund would come in handy should Richmond face an emergency, both Ms. Cuffee-Glenn and Ms. Reid said.

The CAFR also is raising other questions. For example, the CAFR’s notes section identifies a series of corrections that needed to be made to previous CAFRs that impacted the 2014 report.

For example, revenue for the Department of Public Utilities was found to be understated by $136 million in fiscal year 2013 because funds set aside to reduce utility rate increases was not properly recognized. That correction also affected the 2014 CAFR, dramatically increasing revenues.

Maybe “that means the council should be thinking about returning some of this money to water and gas customers,” said City Councilman Parker C. Agelasto, who spotted the correction in reviewing the CAFR.

Another unanswered question found in the CAFR: How did the city lose $17.2 million in refinancing some bonds, a loss never previously disclosed?

Also unexplained is how the city Department Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities overspent its budget in fiscal 2014 by nearly $826,000. That fact was not disclosed to the council.