Fiscal restraint salvages county’s FY2010 status

The government also spent $214,000 less than budgeted from the retirement account, Kisaalita said.

There were only two areas where spending exceeded appropriations — $119,624 for legal services and $185,551 for utilities.

At Kisaalita’s request, the BOC approved a budget amendment allowing some of the unspent appropriations to be transferred to those two areas.

The vote was 4-2, with commissioners Larry Joe Wilburn and Eva Elder voting no. They did not comment prior to the vote, but said later that they wanted the final numbers in the FY2010 audit to reflect actual spending.

The fiscal restraint significantly reduced the pressure on the county’s reserves.

Kisaalita earlier this year expected the General Fund reserves to drop to about $3 million. However, she said if the preliminary figures for FY2010 hold up, the reserves should drop from $4.7 to only $4.3 million.

The reserve balance also was protected by a decision to cover two other shortfalls — a total of $368,378 debt service payments for a pair of water and sewer funds — with money from the Barrow County Water & Sewerage Authority instead of the county’s general operating fund, Kisaalita said.

TAX VOTES

Also on Nov. 9 the board voted unanimously to call a special election March 15, 2011 for a single-issue referendum: a six-year extension of the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.

If approved by voters, the extension would be to continue the penny tax from July 2012-June 2018, with the $50-60 million in collections earmarked for capital debt payments and new capital projects for the county government and for all of its municipalities.

In an unrelated tax matter, the BOC unanimously approved a “tax levy resolution” presented by Wayne McLocklin, the attorney for the Barrow County Board of Education.

In the resolution, the BOC commits the county to levying and collecting enough property taxes to cover any shortfall the school system has in covering the annual debt payments on $37 million in 2010 general obligation bonds being issued this year.

BOC chairman Danny Yearwood tried to clarify the intent of the resolution, saying he was a little uncomfortable that if the school system’s sales tax revenues don’t cover the debt, “this board has to levy a tax on the citizens to make up the difference… the citizens have got to make up a shortfall.”

However, McLocklin said the Georgia constitution has a technical requirement that the taxing authority – in this case, the BOC – pass a resolution agreeing to cover with ad valorem tax revenues the school system’s bond debt, regardless of whether the tax is ever actually levied.

“We are asking you to levy a tax we don’t anticipate you ever having to collect,” he said.

The vote on the resolution was unanimous.

OTHER FINANCIAL MATTERS

The board unanimously approved two financial housekeeping items that Kisaalita requested.

The first was to allow the finance department to remove from the county’s fixed assets some old items that in a recent inventory could not be accounted for.

Most of the assets were almost 20 years old and of little or no value.

Next, the board agreed to change the way the government accounts for grant income and expenditures. Instead of including that activity in the general fund, it will be handled in a newly established “grant fund.”

The board tabled a grantrelated matter presented by Sheriff Jud Smith.