County to add $340,000 to 2016 budget

County Administrator Gary Petrovich and Auditor Eunice Coker, far right, discuss with the Board of County Commissioners a budget amendment amounting to approximately $340,000 in the commissioner’s chambers Monday, Aug. 8.

The county is working on its first budget amendment of the year, which requires the county to clean up previously missed line items and adjust other areas of the budget to move things in line.

“Some of it is because of an accounting error, some of it is because of a request of additional funds,” said County Commissioner Art Swannack.

Commissioner Michael Largent described the accounting error more as a “budget oversight” where a line item was missed.

“There’s a misconception that there was an accounting transaction that created errors. There wasn’t any problem with how past transactions were recorded,” he said. “The problem was with budgeting that was missed, and we’re correcting it with our first amendment.”

Swannack said the Whitcom expense line was missed in the 2016 budget, amounting to approximately $295,000 in expenses for the county to now figure into the budget. Additionally, some other departments are requesting additional funds, which will bring the total budget amendment to approximately $340,000.

The commissioners met Monday morning with County Auditor Eunice Coker and County Administrator Gary Petrovich to discuss the options for covering the $340,000 in expenses.

“There’s another area that was explored last week. The general government fund used by Bob Reynolds had another $100,000 that was not going to be spent on repairs and maintenance this year,” he told the commissioners.

The commissioners, however, were hesitant about using this fund.

“We cannot be depending on one-time money to sustain a budget,” said Largent. “I’m not comfortable with that.”

All of the commissioners expressed concerns about using one-time money.

Another option discussed at the meeting was looking into the county’s operating contingency fund, which had $95,000 set aside in it this year. Coker and Petrovich suggested taking $76,000 out of this fund to help cover for some of the expenses.

Commissioner Dean Kinzer expressed his concern with this.

“We need to make sure that this is communicated so all the departments know,” he said. “We’re doing everybody a disservice if we don’t say, ‘you guys are going to have to watch your budgets because we don’t have a safety net.’”

The commissioners agreed that once the budget amendment is set and passed, communication will occur with the department heads to have them re-evaluate their 2016 budgets.

“It’s only fair to them to tell them to use what you have wisely,” said Swannack.

The next option discussed was in regard to projected sales tax increases that could bring approximately $100,000 more in revenue than originally projected.

“Conservatively, I think, I would be willing to increase that revenue project by $75,000,” Petrovich told the commissioners.

“Go ahead and make an adjustment for the $75,000 if we have a reasonable expectation of that sales tax revenue,” Largent said. “That reduces the amount to take out of the main budget.”

Largent told the Gazette he thinks the $75,000 is a conservative estimate, and the data so far this year supports that additional revenue coming in.

An additional source of revenue was also not entered into the budget correctly, said Petrovich. This revenue source is the public works vehicle insurance revenue, which is approximately $199,000.

“The road fund brings in approximately $190,000 of revenue to the budget amendment to fix this,” said Swannack. “The road fund was missed.”

Largent told the Gazette that the missed revenue in the budget was actually an overhead allocation that was just initiated this year.

The exact details of the budget amendment are not finalized yet, but the commission expects to vote on the amendment at its next meeting, with the vote expected to be for the expenses to be covered by the $199,000 from public works that will move to the general fund, $76,000 from the operating reserve and $75,000 from the projected sales tax revenue. The vote will be pending that everything is finalized and ready to go.

“All those numbers will be presented in a nice form,” said Largent. “Let us hope.”

Petrovich cautioned that all the details are still not known and could still be changing.

“Things might change between now and Monday, too,” he said.

The commission will meet at 10 a.m. at the commissioner’s chambers at the Whitman County Courthouse on Monday, Aug. 15.