Macoupin County Board Finance Committee met June 6.
Here are the minutes provided by the committee:
I. CALL TO ORDER
PRESENT: Payne, Armour, Adden, Dragovich, Heuer, Kiel, Stayton, Schmidt, Duncan, McGartland, Mueller, Deihl, Ross, Kravanya, Bishop, Boehler, Starr, Sudduth
ABSENT:
II. AUDIT PRESENTATION
1. FY 21-22 Audit Presentation
Duncan said the audit was not ready to be presented. The county was now delinquent with the state as they had already used their one extension. There was a question on if the county would be receiving a discount as the audit was not done. Duncan said it was the county's issue that had led to the delay. He explained that when the auditors came in November, the usual time for them to come, the bank reconciliation was not complete by the Treasurer's office. That led the auditors coming in early May, but the bank reconciliation was still not ready. Duncan said there would be significant discussion of this when the audit was presented.
III. BUDGET HEARING PRESENTATIONS
1. Overview of General Fund Projected Revenue vs Budget Requests
Duncan walked through the initial budget requests from each official or department head, which totaled 9,836,732. Based on the revenue projections, which totaled 9,328,009 which is a deficit of 508,723. He walked through the four largest revenue areas. The property tax had been levied to be flat so there would be no additional funds there. For both the sales and income tax, the conservative three year estimates they had been using the last few years. He pointed out that this looked like it would be the first year in a while both would decrease from the previous year. The personal property replacement tax was mentioned in the state budget as having been miscalculated and the county would be receiving a lower amount. They would be telling us what that amount would be in August. For now, he was estimating to be the more normal amount. If the Board wanted to readjust any of these revenue projections, they could, but the county had had success the last few years using these types of revenue projections with a full funded budget stabilization for the first time and a significantly larger general fund reserve than the county had.
2. Anthony Kravanya - Coroner
Kravanya discussed his budget request for both the General Fund as well as his special fund, the Coroners Fee Fund. The special fund is used for equipment. It can not be used to supplement the general fund. Kravanya said he had his raise of 3% budgeted in and lowers the medical exams cost in order to balance it out in the General Fund. The other items in his general fund were left flat. His special fund remained flat as well.
3. Aaron Bishop - E 911
Bishop discussed the E911 Fund budget. The county does not supplement his budget, it is all raised through service charges on devices that can dial 911. His special fund overall had a slight increase of 2.57% overall.
4. Lee Ross - Circuit Clerk
Ross discussed her budget proposal. The Circuit Clerk budget is decreasing from $522,743 to $508,324 due to a retirement which the new employee's starting salary is less than the retirees. The jury commission budget remained flat at $4,376. Her special funds also were flat requests.
5. Michelle Mueller - Regional Superintendent
Mueller discussed her budget request. She was different as the budget she gets is from the four different counties in her region with a percentage based on that county's EAV. Macoupin has about half of the total EAV and so the amount was $78,421. The only addition to the budget was the rent amount for moving into the new Voting Center building on the Courthouse complex.
6. Ken Deihl - Circuit Court
Judge Deihl discussed his request. For the General Fund, he is increasing the hourly appointed attorney fees, conflict pd stipends, and transcript fee line items by $55,000. The jury line items however are being lowered $42,000 as there are American Rescue Plan funds available to cover jury expenses. His general fund budget overall would be increased by $10,000 overall. He did want to point out that his budget request next year would be increasing by $42,000 at least since the ARPA money would not be able to be used next year again. The hourly appointed attorney fees had not been raised in 7 years and the conflict public defender stipends had not be raised in 5 years. He felt this was the best he could do to keep the system a float. His special fund in the Law Library Fund has an increase request for $3,500. There was a question about why the hourly rate had not been raised gradually over the 7 years instead of asking for a major increase all at once. Deihl said the Board had repeatedly asked for the officials to keep their costs down and budgets flat and he had done that. Now however the raise was needed to keep things moving.
IV. AGENDA ITEMS
1. Resolution Transferring Funds from General Fund to Tort Liability Fund
Duncan said they needed to move $200,000 into the tort liability fund in order to finish paying this year's premium for work comp and liability insurance. There had been that significant increase in the premium this year that required this transfer. In order to make it budget neutral, the income and sales tax revenue projections were both being increased by $100,000.
Motion by Stayton, seconded by Adden to recommend the resolution to the full Board.
RESULT: MOTION TO RECOMMEND [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Aaron Stayton, Member
SECONDER: Ross Adden, Member
AYES: Payne, Armour, Adden, Dragovich, Heuer, Kiel, Stayton
2. Resolution Amending Special Fund Appropriations
Duncan said this resolution would establish a budget for the Wind Permit Fee Application Fund. They were going through their first wind permit application so they needed to set an appropriation to spend the money from the applicant for the application process.
Motion by Stayton, seconded by Armour to recommend to the full Board the resolution.
RESULT: MOTION TO RECOMMEND [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Aaron Stayton, Member
SECONDER: Todd Armour, Vice Chair
AYES: Payne, Armour, Adden, Dragovich, Heuer, Kiel, Stayton
3. Update on Property Tax Cycle
Duncan said that the Assessor's office had completed their work on property taxes on April 25th. On May 6th, the software company they use had their servers go down for two weeks. While the county is hosted on site so the software was still accessible, there were major issues with the tax extension side of things. During the two weeks they were down as well as after the came back up, the support from the company in trying to get the software to work was not existent. Through a lot of work with the Assessor's help, the property taxes had finally balanced out and he would be switching over to the Treasurer shortly. McGartland said the due dates this year would be August 25th and September 29th.
4. American Rescue Plan Ledger
Duncan said he had not been able to update the ledger due to the property tax work, but he would have it ready for Tuesday night's meeting.
http://macoupincountyil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=15&ID=3835&Inline=True
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