×

Commission looking closely at budgets

ELKINS — The Randolph County Commission is asking the county’s elected officials to turn in proposed budgets that include no pay raises, saying that once a “clear picture” of the county’s finances comes together, raises can be considered before the next fiscal year’s budget is finalized and turned in to the state.

“As we entered into the new year, we wanted to see what the last half of the current fiscal year looked like,” Commission President Mark Scott told the elected officials during a special county commission meeting. Attending were Sheriff Mark Brady, Prosecuting Attorney Michael Parker, County Clerk Brenda Wiseman and County Assessor Phyllis Yokum.

Commissioners created a spread sheet for the meeting showing the revenues and expenses of the county’s general fund for each fiscal year from 2014 through 2019.

“You can see when you look at the averages that we are spending more than we’re taking in by about $24,000 per month,” Scott said. “We tried to figure out, ‘What is going on? What has caused this situation?'”

“What we’ve seen is, every single year since 2015, we have spent more money than we have taken in,” Scott said. “Each year that gap has continued, until last year we spent $1 million more in the general fund than we took in.

“We’ve had some big capital projects, increasing our communications ability, also the 911 center, so there’s been several different things that go into that.”

According to the spread sheet, in 2015 the county’s general fund took in $6,956,641 in revenue, and the county spent $7,013,613 from the general fund. In the 2018 fiscal year, the general fund took in $7,951,237 in revenue, and $8,963,208 was spent from the general fund.

The commissioners said what they found while preparing for the 2020 budget was that excess money has been rolled over from year to year in the county budget.

“As you all know, every year, you have your budgets approved… and there’s money left over at the end of the year,” Scott said. “We’ve always been led to believe that we’ve got $800,000 to $1 million in rollover money every year. Which we do, but what we didn’t realize is that all of that rollover money has been from excess funds that have been accumulated over the years.”

Commissioners plan to handle the excess money differently starting with the new budget.

Scott said the excess money, after rolling over from year to year, has dwindled from $5.2 million to about $2.5 million.

“But we didn’t know what was excess and what was revenue,” Scott said. From now on, that rollover excess money will be put in a contingency fund by itself, as opposed to allocating it to different funds and potentially losing track of it.

The elected officials were asked to approach the budgeting process differently this year.

“What we’d like to ask you all to do is to present a budget that has no pay raises at this point,” Scott said. “That way we can have a baseline of what we’re looking at. And then once we look through all the expenditures, we look through all the expenses, and the revenues, then we can determine from there what we are able to do in the form of a pay raise.

“Just to be completely transparent with you guys, we don’t know what that looks like at this point,” he added.

Scott and commissioners Chris See and David Kesling said they will be looking closely at every departmental budget, including their own.

“Another thing that we’re taking a long hard look at is our budget, the county commission budget, because we want to make sure that we are living within our means, just as well as we ask all of you to live within your means,” Scott said.

The commissioners pointed out that the elected officials have not overspent their department’s budgets during the past six years.

“Each year I think every one of you has turned back in money from your budgets,” Scott said, noting that the county needs to get its own fiscal house in order before it can consider helping other entities.

“Is there discretionary spending that we’ve been doing that we need to back down on? Because I believe that we need to take care of, and fund you all properly, first. And so if there’s anything in excess of that, then we would be able to fund outside entities. But we need to make sure we are in a good financial spot before we start looking at discretionary spending,” he said.

Commissioners said they will look at the initial budgets presented by the elected officials, and then meet with each one individually to go over the details. Then another meeting will be scheduled between the commissioners and all the elected officials, leading up to finalizing the county budget.

“The goal is we would like to get the budget passed by March 21,” Scott said.

The regular county commission meeting will be today at 1:30 p.m. in the James Cain Courthouse Annex.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

Starting at $3.92/week.

Subscribe Today