SANGER – With the fiscal year coming to a close, the city’s funds appear to be in a relatively healthy state.
On April 16, the Sanger City Council heard a year-to-date budget versus actual report from Finance Director Virginia Harmon. The presentation explored the general, administration, water operations, sewer operations and disposal operations funds, showcasing the variance between initial budget appropriations and actual expenditures.
The data was pulled from April 10, representing around 75% of the fiscal year, and the general fund shows promise of not resulting in a deficit, which has been a worry for some community members over the past year.
“The buzzword, as far being a ‘deficit budget,’ didn’t materialize,” said Mayor Pro Tem Daniel Martinez in his comments. “We budgeted for a deficit, but it didn’t happen.”
In response, Harmon explained that a big reason for this positive trend is based on how the city projects salaries and benefits. She said that the city budgets for all vacant positions at the highest benefits package, because there’s no way to fully anticipate which spots will be filled, and what benefits employees will opt in or out of.
Because of this budgeting practice, the city has only reached around 51% of its budgeted expenditures in the general fund at this point in the year. The salary savings from unfilled positions across the city also helped keep all of the other funds covered in the presentation in relatively healthy positions.
“Best case scenario, we are fully staffed, but that’s not always the case and doesn’t always come to fruition,” said Harmon.
Harmon made sure to clarify that although the salary savings have been a significant help, some of the city’s larger expenditures will be coming in toward the end of the year, so the numbers will not remain so low.
With regards to general fund revenues, the city has reached around 74% of its projected annual revenue. Harmon said in her presentation that the remainder will likely come in within the next few months through tax collections, interest allocations that haven’t yet been booked and transfers or reclassifications that may have an impact on the numbers.
“So far, it looks like everything is lined up to still project out to meet those budgets that we did project in the beginning of the year,” Harmon said.
Speaking on the water operations fund, Harmon pointed out that there is still a little more than $1.9 million in revenue that has not yet been collected, but with the last four billing months being some of the hottest, she anticipates that higher bills will help close the gap.
The presentation concluded with a brief breakdown of the disposal operations fund. Though currently short by a little more than $934,00, Harmon hopes to get closer in the last few months of the budget year.
Harmon noted that despite the disposal operations fund not budgeting for any personnel costs, there ended up being $196.65 expended under that category that will be looked into for clarity.
While the council were pleased to see stability across the city’s funds, Councilmember Michael Montelongo also expressed his hopes to see staff continue to budget cautiously, rather than use the good news as the basis for more spending.
Harmond responded and concluded the information item by assuring staff will be doing just that.
“We also do look at more than one year, so we’ll be looking at past history and any anomalies that have happened,” Harmon said. “We don’t like to just take last year and plug it in for this year, that’s not part of our process.”
