Budget Committee: Projected Carryover is $600,000 Short
At a short but very confused meeting on March 9, the Budget & Finance Committee learned that the actual 2020 Budget carryover figure is $600,000 short of the amount projected during 2021 Budget deliberations. The Committee also passed four ordinances on to the Quorum Court for its March meeting.
JPs Tyler Pearson (Dist. 7), Randy Higgins (Dist. 2) and Matt Brown (Dist. 8) attended online, while JPs Jerry Boyer (Dist. 12) and Chair John Pickett (Dist. 11) were in the room for the half-hour meeting. JPs online seemed disoriented by inaccurate and incomplete handouts, a couple of which were not made available to the public before the meeting.
Treasurer’s Report
County Treasurer Scott Sanson first reported on February totals for the “big 5” County revenue accounts:
County General: $2,243,861
County Road: $4,350,897
County Road Sales Tax: $1,832,638
Animal Control: $1,727,080
Criminal Justice Sales Tax: $1,407,380
He remarked the County is “above where we started last year” on revenue so far, with 19% of our projected revenue already received. He said sales tax for February was $1,052,913 — “the first month in the history of our sales tax we’ve been over a million dollars for the month.”
He added that sales tax is “up 7.79% vs. last year, and 8.53% vs. year-to-date” and mentioned that the 2020 carryover Ordinance would be discussed later on the agenda.
Ordinance 21-04, 2020 Budget Clean-up
In addition to the $879 transfer from food to cell phones within the County General/Circuit Court 2nd Division account, County Clerk Margaret Darter explained that she added a $3,772 transfer from phone cards to inmate purchases within the Commissary Fund.
She said this second clean-up Ordinance is the “final” clean-up of the 2020 Budget.
After Pearson pointed out that his version of the document didn’t seem to be the “latest version,” Darter read the new section 2 aloud and County Attorney Phil Murphy displayed the latest version of the document on the wall screen in the Courtroom.
JP Tyler Lachowsky then said that Ordinance 21-04 “on the website” is the 2020 Amended Carryover, and Darter said that “has been corrected to (21-)06.”
Pearson moved to approve the Ordinance, and Pickett advanced the Ordinance ready to go to the full Court, even though the second was inaudible and no Committee vote was held.
Ordinance 21-05, Sheriff’s Dept. Weather-Related Pay
In moving to discuss Ordinance 21-05, Higgins asked, “I assume this is the same version we received in email?” and Pickett verified that.
Pearson, who seconded Pickett, asked “for an explanation” of this Ordinance that moves funds from the overtime category to the emergency pay weather-related category.
Fiscal Officer Angie Wooley from the Sheriff’s Department explained there is no “pre-budgeted” money for weather-related emergency pay, “based on County policy.”
Because February’s winter storm required emergency pay, the Ordinance is adjusting the funds to “come out of the correct line item,” she added.
Pearson Requests Examples
Pearson pressed further, asking for “some examples of the personnel that were called in and what type of work they did and what qualified them for emergency pay.”
Wooley reiterated that the County Personnel Manual “states time-and-a-half … can be approved for Faulkner County employees … if there is a disaster or man-made natural occurrence of some sort where it requires an emergency response” from the Sheriff’s Department.
She said deputies, dispatchers, and detention officers primarily received emergency pay during the winter storm “to still manage public safety, so we were able to pay them appropriately, based on policy.”
Other County Offices Coming
Sanson then added, “I didn’t get a copy … Did you include my office in that? We had to come in to get payroll done….”
Darter answered, “This is just the Sheriff … I haven’t even included yours and mine; we’ll have to come back next month.”
Responding to a question from Lachowsky, Darter explained the difference between overtime pay and emergency pay:
Overtime, you have to work 40 hours plus, so it’s the plus. But emergency pay is time-and-a-half, but you don’t have to have the 40 hours….
That’s why we retitled it to “emergency pay.” That means there’s something attached to that, like a ruling by the Judge…
Further discussion revealed “it’s referred to as ‘annual leave’ in the personnel policy” and “that’s actually another issue,” Murphy said.
When Pickett asked a second time for a motion to advance Ordinance 21-05 to the full Court Higgins again moved, with Pearson as second. Although only 2 votes could be heard on the video, Pickett moved on to the “next item on the agenda” without no further comments.
Ordinance 21-06, 2020 Amended Carryover
As Pickett asked for a motion to consider, Pearson commented on his confusion with the meeting documents “in my inbox” and “multiple emails,” while Lachowsky and Murphy both tried to help figure out the correct documents.
Darter explained she puts all the documents on the County website “and then we email on out to you.” She added,
When you open it, I think it says “6,” for when you open it, it has a “4” because someone else assigned the number and 04 was already ins use, so just a criss-cross of different people doing ordinances and us not getting it straight before they all went out….
“Missed” Carryover Estimate by $600,000
Pickett asked for “any questions or comments for Mr. Sanson about the 2020 carryover,” and Pearson then asked for “a brief summary of the carryover and how it relates to your projections.”
Sanson said
It’s the worst mess I’ve had yet by far. Last year was tough. But, really what happened at the end is our revenue didn’t come in as expected. We had some transfer money that I thought was coming in, didn’t. And, actually our expenses were a little higher….
We missed by about $600,000. Like I said, it was bad. Actually, I guess the last two years … sometimes you get to try to get too precise and trying to project that stuff… I’ve got to kind of go back to maybe the way I did before, as little less precise, a little bit more over-estimation.
When you’re going into this stuff, you want to as as close as you can, so we can get the best estimate we can to do the budgeting so we don’t have to re-do much budgeting on the back end. But like I said, this was bad … and I’m going to work to not do it again.
…how we always handle this — we do that estimate back in October-November and then we work off that estimate until we get the actual number. And the actual number is whatever the balance is on January 1st, less Period 13 expenditures.
Period 13 expenditures are expenditured against the prior year’s budget, expensed in January-February. So, say it was in December, November last year, don’t get it paid until January-February, it works against last year’s budget.
So, we take that January 1 amount, subtract out Period 13 expenses, and that’s the carryover we use to budget for the next year….
These are actual numbers; these are no longer estimates.
Total Carryover Amount?
When Higgins asked about the total carryover number, Sanson said, “It should be by fund… and honestly I didn’t put a total on there because I don’t care what the total carryover is. This carryover number is to help the budgeting of each fund … we’ve always just done it like this.”
Pearson agreed, saying he’d like to “see it by fund because I know that, during our budgeting discussions we had delayed part of the COLA raise for Faulkner County employees because we wanted to wait to see what the final carryover is…. It would be helpful to see it by fund and to see it in comparison to the projections.”
Sanson replied, “This is by fund, what you’re looking at here…. There is no carryover by department on the expending side … it does not break down by department on the revenue side.”
After several more moments’ confusion, Darter pointed out that, for a comparison to projections, “you would compare it to your budget book.”
Sanson added
What I do, and you can do it on yours, too. You can take these numbers and just put them in there beside where the projected carryover is, and then .. you’ll know what the difference is.
He offered to “rework these numbers into that revenue section and we can send that back out.”
Pearson: COLA Raise?
Pearson said he was
just concerned about the County General difference just because of the conversation related to the COLA raise …
I don’t know if the Chair or the Committee has any desired intentions to revisit the cost of living adjustment, like we had discussed, but I know several members on the Court … were interested in doing that…. it might be the time to do it.
Sanson cautioned
From a financial standpoint, I would say COLA raises are off the table. That’s up to you’all. At this point you have to take money from somewhere else in order to give it. The excess that we anticipated is not there.
We’re actually not even to our 12% reserve; I believe we’re at 10 or 11 or something like that…. We’re still within statutory …
The Committee unanimously voted to advance the Ordinance to the full Court.
Ordinance 21-07, Amend 2021 Sheriff’s Budget
Again, JPs were confused about the correct document, which they did not receive before the meeting. Darter explained, “Council’s trying to share it to you’all. This is a result of the carryover, so it’s a change in the Budget….”
Murphy added
This is piggybacking on what Scott (Sanson) just presented as far as the statutory requirement that we in the Quorum Court can appropriate 90% of the anticipated revenue each year. We don’t have a problem in regards to County General.
However, there is a very, very small issue regards the Sheriff’s Automation fund … because the numbers are such that the appropriation exceeds 90% and it’s like 90.2%. We need to change that appropriation … from $6,500 to $6,300.
After several moments of total silence and no questions except from JPs trying to determine the correct document, the Committee voted unanimously to send Ordinance 21-07 forward to the full Court.
Pickett then adjourned the meeting.
Videos edited from original video on Faulkner County’s YouTube channel.)
Visit Faulkner County Reports on YouTube for more videos and video excerpts from this and other County meetings.
Why is there 1.7 million in an animal control account when we do not have an animal control department?