County passes $340,000 budget amendment

The Board of County Commissioners look over paperwork regarding the county’s $343,594 budget amendment presented by County Auditor Eunice Coker Monday, Aug. 15. The board unanimously passed the budget amendment to cover some increased expenses in three departments and a previously missed expense line item.

After nearly a month of discussion, the Board of County Commissioners passed 2016’s first budget amendment, totaling $343,594.

“There’s a little less money than what was estimated earlier to be spent,” said Commissioner Art Swannack. The original estimate was closer to $350,000.

The county needed the budget amendment after missing a line item in the original budget, which was $289,250 in the general government fund that was part of Whitcom’s budget.

The revenue for the Whitcom item was put in the budget, but the county forgot to include the expense line.

“That means the budget wasn’t balanced,” Swannack said.

Had the expense line been put into the budget initially, that would have actually meant more cutting with the original budget in other departments.

“We would have had to do some other cutting somewhere else,” said Swannack.

Other changes to the budget include adding $750 to the commissioners line item for clerk travel, $10,000 to the coroner’s budget as a result of an increased case load and $43,920 to the facilities management line item. It also includes a decrease of $326 in the juvenile line item to bring the total change to $343,594.

The amendment will be covered by a projected increase of $75,000 in sales tax revenue, $71,000 from the operating reserve fund and approximately $199,000 in public works vehicle insurance revenue. The county’s operating reserve fund had about $95,000 in it.

“It is designed for things like this,” said Commissioner Michael Largent. “That type of budget discipline is standing us in good stead.”

The commissioners praised County Administrator Gary Petrovich for establishing that fund, and they also said they will be communicating with the department heads that the fund is essentially gone this year.

“We should remember and communicate as Commissioner Kinzer previously communicated that we have about $24,000 left in reserves and that we have little room for budget amendments,” said Swannack.

“We’re utilizing our operating reserves in a pretty big chunk, so we’ll have to be very careful,” said Largent. “That’s the message I would like to communicate.”

The original plan as discussed last week actually had the commission prepared to vote for $76,000 to come out of the operating reserves, not $71,000. That, however, changed when County Auditor Eunice Coker noticed a typo.

“We can lower the amount taken from reserve from the $76,000 that was agreed on,” she said. “I had transposed some numbers. When I corrected my typo, we had about $4,000 more in revenue than expenditures to make it $71,029.”

The total county budget, which was passed at $15,054,983, now stands at $15,398,577.

The county will also soon start its 2017 budgeting processing with department heads.