Amador County – Ione City Council on Tuesday heard that its General Fund revenue could end very close to projections for the year.
Interim City Manager Jeff Butzlaff said a report showed $142,000 in revenue at the end of May, and the general fund was $64,000 under budget, with June income still to come. He said June revenue last year in tax and fees alone totaled $54,000 and the city is really close on overall general fund forecast for the end of the year.
Butzlaff said: “I think at this point things are looking pretty good.” We’ve got a handle on the situation and the “variances are very modest if anything.”
Quarterly payments, such as police communications will draw down the budget, he said, but it is much more favorable than the $330,000 budget deficit that adopted last December. It is now in balance, he said, and it “was a challenge during his tenure to deal with the financial collapse as best we could.”
Butzlaff said the city is far from the sudden revelations of last year, when it was found the General Fund was $500,000 off or $1.5 million off. “Those days are behind us,” he said. “We’ve stabilized” and established a new understanding and data that is accurate to a reasonable degree.
City Financial Manager Jane Wright went over years of data in roughly 30 different city funds, to clarify where borrowing occurred and see where it was owed. City liabilities and assets in the data show what funds owe other funds, he said, and Wright’s work “brought the entire budget into focus for the first time since I have been here.”
She unraveled and reconstructed the funds and found some funds where money was taken out and no offsetting replenishment or repayment was made. Butzlaff said those are now brought into clear focus and can be restored.
Butzlaff said impact fees are part of developer fees, making up $375,000 in the general fund when they are ultimately collected, and will become a positive impact on the General Fund as “accounts receivable.” They also have about $180,000 in impact fees related to fire station development that were borrowed from police impact fees, and will be paid back.
Ione enters a transition year, he said, going from the old level of operations to reduce to a level that is more consistent in keeping with current realities of revenue limitations. This year ends as a bridge year, building back the general fund reserve, and beginning to pay back some of the funds that were represented as being part of the General Fund reserve when they were not.
By January, when they get a midyear report, Butzlaff said, they will establish a system to get monthly reports on a regular basis and will be able to substantiate that more reliably.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
