County Board approves fiscal year 2015 budget
<span>CHESTER -- The cautious optimism was evident during Monday's budget meeting at the Randolph County Courthouse.</span>
<span>The Board of Commissioners approved the county's fiscal year 2015 budget, which began Monday and runs until November 30, 2015. The budget figures showed, if all goes according to plan, a positive ending balance of $3,877.</span>
<span>"We knew coming into the year that there would be significant challenges," said Jim Schmersahl, the county's certified public accountant with Schorb and Schmersahl, LLC. "Tremendous progress has been made in cutting costs and bringing the budget closer to even."</span>
<span>The balanced budget could end several years of deficits in county spending. Fiscal year 2014 finished with a deficit of $281,979, while the year before that showed a deficit of $753,641.</span>
<span>"The point is there's not a lot of slack here to keep things balanced," said Commissioner David Holder. "If anything happens, we're going to have to borrow."</span>
<span>Holder said there are 15 less people working at the courthouse than during the previous fiscal year. The money saved through early retirements and layoffs during the past year has made a difference.</span>
<span>"There is $396,000 less in expenditures from fiscal year 2013 to fiscal year 2014," Schmersahl said. "Ninety-five line items had total savings of $885,000, while 140 line items increased by $487,000."</span>
<span>Schmersahl said that of the 140 items that increased, 14 involved salaries that had locked-in percentage increases. An additional 13 line items were exactly the same as the previous year.</span>
<span>"Seventy-six and a half percent of the budget is in salary and health insurance," Schmersahl said. "It becomes very difficult to reduce costs without focusing on the salary line item."</span>
<span>The budget also includes $250,000 in contingency appropriations.</span>
<span>"It almost certainly will not be spent," Schmersahl said. "We certainly hope not, as that would require an emergency."</span>
<span>A key part of the budget discussion was sales tax revenue. Schmersahl said the county has lost $1.25 million in sales tax receipts during the past four years.</span>
<span>The 2015 budget includes an estimated $1.825 million in sales tax reimbursements from the state and a $1.11 million in county-wide sales tax revenue. Those numbers are down from the 2011 amounts of $2.125 million and $1.167 million, respectively, according to Schmersahl.</span>
<span>"This is indicative of the challenges the county is facing," he said.</span>
<span>As part of the meeting, the board approved a pair of transfer ordinances for the General Fund and Mental Health Funding Board.</span>
<span>"What happens during the course of the year is some line items get overspent and some get underspent," Holder said. "The ones that didn't get overspent get transferred to help balance out the line items that did get overspent.</span>
<span>"What you can't do is spend more than appropriated for categories."</span>
<span>In regard to the Mental Health Funding Board, the appropriation ordinance included a tax levy to make sure the board receives property tax allocations.</span>
"There is an appropriations ordinance to spend the money and another to levy the money as property taxes," Holder said. "You have to make sure you spend what you receive in property taxes in the areas you levy the tax."