Third amendment wraps '16 budget

The Board of County Commissioners Monday formally accepted and passed the third and final budget amendment for 2016. The amendment added in more than $200,000 to the revenue side of the budget.

“This is basically technical corrections to various departmental budgets,” said Gary Petrovich, county administrator. “A lot of the reasons for these things was that revenue and expenditures didn't match up.”

Petrovich reported that district court ended up with a surplus of $53,950 in revenue. Commissioner Art Swannack told the Gazette two weeks ago that the court had more revenue than expected with money being recouped from legal fines and fees. The total amount to the positive for the court was actually $31,000 though, because approximately $22,000 was used to correct a double entry for the state's portion of the judge's salary.

“It's still a net positive,” said Swannack.

Also included in this amendment was approximately $266,000 in revenue from a 911 grant to the Whitcom line item.

“It's not huge amounts of added revenue, but it helps the start of 2017,” Swannack said two weeks ago.

The 2017 budget will have an estimated carry over value of $210,133, which is being used to balance the budget.

“Given what we have seen thus far in 2016 for the budget amendment process, it was good that we worked through it,” said Petrovich.

The county worked through two previous budget amendments this year. The first budget amendment, passed in August, totaled $343,594. That amendment covered $289,250 in expenses to the Whitcom budget that was missed in the original budget, $43,920 to the facilities management line item, $10,000 to the coroner's line item to manage an increased case load, $740 to the commissioners’ line item for clerk travel and $326 to the juvenile line item.

That amendment process was complicated due to a lack of revenue and required the commissioners to move around items. The amendment was ultimately covered by a projected increase of $75,000 in sales tax revenue, $71,000 from the operating reserve and $199,000 in public works vehicle insurance revenue.

The second amendment actually left the county with a surplus with $98,874 in expenditures and $276,847 in revenue. That amendment decreased the capital improvements budget to $50,000 from $150,000, added $60,000 in revenue expected from a payback from a loan to one of the parks districts that had not been recorded and corrected a $68,000 error in the juvenile department that was budgeted for a position that no longer exists. The amendment also covered a $41,000 expense from the election department, a $10,000 request from the coroner's office to cover an increased case load and requests from district and superior court to cover add ons, expert witnesses and interpreters for trial loads.

“The only department that we really saw needing additional funds this year was the coroner's fund just because of unanticipated activity,” said Petrovich.