Last week’s edition included a story about how the county budget deficit shrank from nearly $1 million to zero during the summer and early fall. But The Press miscalculated the size of the budget surplus that helped close the deficit.
The story reported that the solid waste department was the only large budget to post a deficit through 11 months of the budget year. But the sheriff’s office did, too. The story reported BCSO’s surplus at $2.6 million through August but it actually ran a roughly $200,000 deficit with some $6.2 million in revenue and about $6.8 million in expenditures.
In addition, rather than $241,000, the fire department surplus was about $87,000. The road department also ran a surplus, but much smaller than reported at about $200,000, not $1.5 million.
The miscalculations were due to adding the unspent portions of each department’s budget with actual revenues higher than those budgeted. The surpluses resulted from the additional revenue only. As such, rather than the roughly $6 million surplus in the five largest county funds, the total was about $1.5 million through August. A month later, it fell to roughly half that sum.
But by spending less than budgeted amounts, the county was able to fund several new big-ticket expenditures in the new budget, including county employee raises, without increasing the total budget, which after removing grant money for large road projects, was essentially level with the previous year’s spending.
County finance director Cheryl Rewis said county reserves were basically unchanged between the start and end of the fiscal year on September 30, increasing only about $10,000 to $4,032,769.
The county released revenue and expenditures totals through September 30 on October 15, the same day last week’s edition went to press.
The totals showed the general fund with a budget surplus of roughly $1.7 million, the road department’s was about $197,000 and the fire department’s was about $174,000. The deficit in solid waste ended the year at some $80,000 and the sheriff’s deficit was about $1.3 million.
The surplus in the five major funds combined was about $691,000.
• The October 10, 2019 edition of The Press misidentified a suspect in a jail booking photo as Michael Antonini. The man pictured was James Strum.
— Managing Editor Joel Addington