County’s fiscal year’s high expenditures due to early new-year costs

Published 9:00 am Saturday, January 21, 2023

County Administrator Daniel Calcote told supervisors Tuesday that the 2023 Fiscal Year is 25 percent complete and they have received 13.8 percent of budgeted receipts.

“That’s normal for the first of the year,” he said. “The bulk of county revenues will be received in January through March, so it is typical for revenues to lag behind at the time of the year.”

He said that board itself had 37.1 percent of annual budgeted expenditures, which is high due to liability insurance premium payment and annual appropriations sent out in October. 

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The District 1 Road fund was 75.5 percent of annual budgeted expenditures due to engineering fees and road construction costs paid on 2021-2022 paving projects. 

The District 2 Road Fund is at 35.1 percent of annual budgeted expenditures due to equipment purchases in November. 

The District 5 Road Fund is at 51.9 percent of annual budgeted expenditures due to large payment in November for the 2021-2022 paving projects.

“Districts 1 and 5 were the last to get paid, so it bled into this year’s expenditures,” he explained. 

District 4’s Eddie Brown asked Calcote about the bond issue they had been working on, with Calcote saying he was expecting the interest rate to go down once the last audit is presented. “The interest rate is really high right now, but it will greatly reduce the interest rate once that audit is complete.”

During the same meeting, District Attorney Dee Bates told the board that he had moved one of his employees into a slot left open after a retirement, with a $10,000 savings due to the new person having fewer years experience. Bates said later on in the year, he’ll go over his budget to see what the final salary would be for the employee.

Also, the county’s emergency management director, Chris Reid, said that a new fire truck one of the volunteer fire departments had applied for had been approved and Sheriff Steve Rushing said he was looking into donating or selling two older vehicles to Calhoun County. That county planned to use the working parts of each vehicle to create one working vehicle for county use.