The Quorum Court Finance Committee held its first of multiple weekly budget meetings in order to prepare the county’s 2018 Fiscal Year Budget. Preliminary discussions were briefly held last week during their regularly scheduled monthly meeting, but this week they began the process of going department-by-department. The individual budgets for the Office of Financial Management, the County Treasurer, the County Clerk and the Quorum Court were discussed.
Finance Committee Chairman Michael White said, “We are beginning to get into the elected officials budget a little bit at a time…like I said when I walked in a little while ago, I told [Justice] Neal [Burge] that I was already a little frustrated with this budget and we are just getting started and it’s not the expenditure side that is actually frustrating me, it’s the revenue side that is frustrating. It’s easy to spend money if you’ve got it, but it’s tough when you haven’t got it…our revenues right now…are projected 11 percent down from 2017.”
“And if insurance is going to be 10 percent up, that’s 20 percent?” Justice Bill Nelson added.
Justic Barry Ball said, “At least 10 percent. When is she [the insurance representative] supposed to come?”
Insurance Committee Chairman Ken Kennemore answered, “What the 12th? But she is going to try to give me some parameters before she comes. With a “stay like we are” and it’s going to be this much of an increase. If we do changes or reduce, then maybe we can save and get it down this much [options].”
White informed the committee, “In working on these budgets, (financial management director) Kelli (Jones) is using 13.5 percent [increase] for the moment just as a workable number. But if you figure it out on a per employee basis, it’s about a $100 per employee. In past years, since we’ve done what we did to do for the hospital and we got in such dire straights financially, over the years we have asked all of the elected officials to initiate cuts on their own and cut their budgets back and tighten up as much as they could …and help us with the budget. But we haven’t done that this year, yet. But at an 11 percent shortfall, if we can’t work on these revenues a little stronger and find some money, that is where we are going to end up.”
White said that last Friday, the balance of the County General Fund had dropped down to $36,621.65.
“Now we made payroll and we paid the bills that were due right at that moment, but we’ve got more bills that are due today and this week. We have had some sales tax come in this week, so we’re up a little bit from that, but the fact that we got to less than $50,000 in county general, you know, if you look back at some of the projects that we’ve tried to do and we had been requested to do…if we had given the raises or the bonuses in June, I don’t know where we’d have been. Well, we’d be eating up that reserve fund CD is where we’d be,” White said.
White also reminded the members that earlier in the year, $200,000 was taken out of county funds and placed in a reserve certificate of deposit.
White also added, “You know we have discussed some of these shortfalls that we’ve had, like just in the general operations a $300,000 difference in state jail fees. That’s significant. So I’m just saying, when we look at these budgets we are tight, we are really, really tight.”
Jones began the process by informing the committee of the changes in her proposed budget for 2018.
“Well, the only increase that I had to do from last year…[was] the retirement that went up to 14.75 percent, so that is going to be an increase that you are going to see on everybody’s personal services budget. And then I used 13.5 percent on insurance, just as an estimate. That is in between 10 and 15. So there is an increase on the insurance and on the retirement. [Also] I’ve mentioned…that Norris got with our office and all three of our computers have got to be upgraded and we have tried to hold off until next year,” Jones said. “That is going to be about $1,000 per computer, so I’ve got $3,000 in there, up from $500 last year. But other than that I didn’t increase anything else. So I tried to keep everything about the same...”
White responded, “Well you plugged it in at $4,000 and in 2015 it was $4,243 and so far this year we spent $4,400, so $4,000 is not an unreasonable number. But ours is pretty much cut and dry, no changes in the salaries or positions or anything like that.”
The tentative 13.5 percent increase included in all departmental budget approximates at roughly $100 per employee.
“Remember, I said that she is using 13.5 percent, which is $100 per employee, but we’ve also discussed, or maybe I’ve preached that we may have to look at some kind of employee cost share program this next season. Which…Kelli and I talked about that today and we’ve got about 200 employees, at $100 per employee that is $200,000 that is built into this budget…[but] if we end up turning around and putting that on the employee’s back, that takes $200,000 out of the overall bottom line of the budget,” White said.
Justice Rick Ash asked, “Is that $200,000 per month or per year?”
White said it was per year.
“That would actually be $240,000 a year,” Justice Ken Kennemore said.
“$240,000, okay,” White said. “I just don’t want everybody to forget that this might have to happen this year. We have carried it as long and absorbed it as long as we could.”
“Last year they gave us some options that would save us some money, but we looked at it and it wasn’t...” Kennemore said.
It was generally accepted that the insurance rate increase last year was either seven percent or seven point seven percent.
“That was before we absorbed the family cost. Because basically what we wanted was for the family deduction to be the same amount. So we actually increased what we paid by more than seven percent,” Ash added.
Kennemore added, “They gave us some options, and we may have to do it this year.”
“It like increased the co-pays and increased the overall deductible. I don’t think that the difference was going to offset that much,” Ash remembered.
“No, it didn’t offset that much, but I’m just saying that…we might have to do something this year,” Kennemore said. “It might be a combination of things. It might be an employee share and maybe tweaking it a little bit.”
White, expressing confidence in the Insurance Committee said, “Well, you all always do a good job of trying to figure out what is going to be best for both the employee and the county. So I’ve got a lot of confidence is ya’ll’s ability, so it just depends on the parameters that they give you to play with.”
Financial Management’s budget ended up at $167,968 up from $161,699 this year.
County Treasurer Peggy Meatte told the committee, regarding her proposed budget, “Well, in county general mine didn’t change…anywhere except the retirement and insurance…And on my automation, under personal services, my part-time salary decreased because my part-time person is not working as many hours as she did, so that did decreased there. Under supplies, I did have to increase my printing supplies by $1,000 because I really did not have enough money in there this year to buy printer cartridges and stuff like that so I did have to increase that…and also right now, my software I had to increase that a little bit for my contract with Apprentice, but I was also told Wednesday or Thursday of last week that I am probably going to have to purchase a new server. So I don’t know how much that is going to cost yet, so that may change the cost of my contract with them also. But I really don’t have any idea what the server is going to cost me, but hopefully I’ll be able to pay for it out of my automation.”
White asked Meatte, “Your running…you’re overall budget for this year is $161,000 and your automation, correct? And your balance is down to $36,750. Are you going to make it?”
She answered, “Yes.”
Nelson suggested that she could use her automation fund if need be.
“Well, she is using her automation fund, it’s just that I got to wondering…if she was going to be able to float it. And guys that’s another thing, as we come to ya’ll on these automation fund, when we got down to $36,000 Friday, it was kind of alarming. We’re down to the last three months, we’d really ask that you work with Peggy and Financial Management as you would and please let us use these automation funds…it may get down to the point that that is the only thing that we have to pay bills with,” White said.
The County Treasurer’s 2018 budget totals 160,213.00, down from $161,284 this year. The office also has budgeted an automation fund of $61,967, down from $64,938 this year.
“So we look at her bottom line number and she is down $1,000. She reduced hers by a little bit, “White said.
In discussing the County Clerk’s budget, White said, “2018 is going to be an election year. There is really not any major changes anywhere is there Janice?”
“Nope, not really,” County Clerk Janice Currie said.
White then said, “The only changes that I’m picking up are just the same as Peggy, the retirement and insurance? Janice, how many employees do you have now?”
“Five,” Currie answered.
The County Clerk’s Office budget for 2018 is $325,350, up slightly from $320,630.34 this year. The office also has an automation fund of $16,325, up from $16,197 this year.
“The last one is just us. The Quorum Court. And we don’t have hardly any wiggle for anything to make any up and downs…It’s the same straight across, pretty much,” White said.
“Are you going to take the travel expense?” Nelson asked.
“Do I need to reduce the travel,” White asked.
“We seriously may have to,” Nelson said.
“We seriously may, no joke,” White agreed.
The Quorum Court budget for 2018 is $182,034, down from $182,186.08 this year. Also, the QC travel line item is for $5,000 in 2018, up from $4,000 this year.
White then announced that next Monday, the committee would look over budgets from the Assessor, the Collector, the Public Defender and the Sheriff.
“I’m hoping that I’ll be ready. I’m meeting with Kelli today, so hopefully I’ll be ready next Monday,” Circuit Court Clerk Leslie Mason said.
“Okay, well if you’re ready then we’ll try to do you next week…Generally what we do is let everyone put their budgets in and then match them up against the revenues and then we look at where we need to start cutting. The ones that we have looked at today, the preliminary four, just to give us a glance are just going straight across the board and the increases are two things that we have no control over,” White said.
It was also announced that the increase in retirement expense has been figured at 0.25 percent.
Nelson also reminded the committee that there are approximately five more weeks of tax collection for this year.
Justice Howard “Bubba” Norvell asked, “Doesn’t most people just pay right there at the last.”
Both Meatte and County Collector Patricia Caldwell agreed that they do.
Meatte also said that the county is still trying to get information from the Arkansas Association of Counties on what “state turnback funds” will be.
Justice Neil Burge then asked the County Treasurer, “Peggy, going back a little bit, a couple years ago, we made funds available for two more people in the Assessor’s Office to work on the commercial side of it. We were told that eventually that would translate into a lot more being out on the tax books. I guess my question is, and the Assessor is not here, but somewhere along the line I was told that they had already identified another half million in addition taxes. When will that start being collected? I know that we are behind a year.”
Caldwell answered, “We are behind one year, so it would be the second year. But we haven’t had that increase this year.”
Burge followed up, “This was mostly supposed to be assessments on industries…so you haven’t seen any signs on that yet?”
They all agreed they had not yet.
“We want to project every penny that we are going to collect, but not a penny more. We don’t want to blow our numbers up and give us false readings and false hope and commit to expenditures that we can’t meet on down the road,” White explained.
thenry@blythevillecourier.com