Olivia P. Tucker
Times Reporter
Scott County Board of Commissioners received an update on the financial report at their meeting on March 6.
Deputy Chief Auditor Deandra Burton said that the annual report covered 2023 and presented a slide show to the commissioners with the information from the report.
“We had an ending cash balance of $5.6 million at the end of December 31, 2023, as reported through the annual financial report,” said Burton, “now that does not actually reflect reality and the reason why it doesn’t reflect reality is because of the end of last year when we were working through the fall settlement we had a lot of issues getting it balanced.”
She added that the day after Christmas it took the county’s new financial software company LOW to assist County Auditor Jennifer Hamelman’s office due to the old software not having anyone in the office to be able to resolve the problem. Those issues delayed the county to get state approval be able to settle. Burton said it was an $8.42 difference keeping the county from being able to have the state’s approval.
Burton said, “How we really financially ended the year was with a cash balance of $14.2 million, not the $5.6 million that you see in the financial report. Because once you have the statement after January 3 when all of settlement and everything had been received, the expenditures had been taken out, that was the balance that we had.”
“This last year in 2023, we had receipts of approximately $52 million in the disbursement of $56 million. Which would say that we exceeded the last 4-year average by about $5 million less in receipts and $2 million more in expenditures,” she said.
Burton’s presentation includes some things the county can do to help their financial situation including:
•Utilize budgeting tools to help department heads better understand the impact of today’s decisions on tomorrow’s expenses.
•Reduce errors during the budgeting process to eliminate the need to request additional appropriations.
•Provide the right data to support rejecting additional appropriations when fund have not been properly controlled
Commissioner President Mike Jones said, “The only thing, I know what orchestrated this. I want people to understand that budget world is each department comes to the county council, and I am not a councilman. I want to say this because it has been aggravating the heck out of me. The department heads have an opportunity to come to the council with a proposed budget. That proposed budget is kind of like if anyone remembers the Sears wishbook, you know Christmas wishbook that you can go in and circle all of the things you want but you’re not going to get all of that.”
“When people say my budget got cut, you never had a budget until the council approved the budget. You had a wishlist of a budget,” he said.
.