Citizens interested in City Council
Citizens interested in City Council
Dec 2011 Homepage
- Huber Heights Funds Report Dec 2011 -
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Background: The city is proposing a .25% income tax levy. As part of city council's discussion with staff a Funds report was constructed and made available to Huber Heights citizens. This report provides some of the information I was looking for in an email I sent to council prior to the meeting. The meeting contained more reports but I did not get a paper copy. I asked that the minutes of the meeting include those reports.
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First let me say it is dangerous for a layman to make conclusions on finances, so take things I write after the report with a discerning eye. This is especially relevant since I do not have further details about the sources of funds or specific expenditures. Please use my thoughts as a means to ask further questions of council either directly or though one of the citizens that attend council meetings or otherwise communicate with council members.
Let me talk about what I think can be gleaned in terms of the questions I asked and statements I made prior to meeting.
About item 1. We can get a general idea of the purpose from the title. The allowable uses is not addressed but you can see how this information would be useful just by looking at how many different water and sewer funds are listed. i.e. Does the fact that a Water Construction Fund exist mean that the $6,425,522.62 in the Water Fund could not be used for water construction? Probably not but what are the rules for transferring money between funds?
Item 2. The reason I asked this because if there are rules that keep the city from transferring money between funds then lets look at who is making them and how to get relief. This was the major discussion that happened Thursday night and it involved 6 of the funds above (I don't know exactly which 6 though). One of the funds of interest this year because of the Aquatic Center is the Mont Co TIF MPITIE fund. Because this fund is set up by State and Federal guidelines it would appear the that city's hands were tied for possible uses. However, this fund is set up to make it easier to borrow money and pay capital improvement debts. At the beginning of this year it shows there was about $1.8 million in the fund and this year the city receive $1.2 million more in receipts. From memory I state that at the beginning of this year there was about $3 million in outstanding debt due to the I-70 interchanges. If the city had chosen to pay off that debt then there would have been no requirement for the city to have a TIF district. If the city had chosen to look into dissolving the TIF district then the $1.2 million of annual receipts currently going into the TIF fund would instead go into the general fund. This would have relieved some of the pressure for the need of a .25% tax levy. That option is no longer available for the TIF money because of all the additional borrowing done this year - but it may be available for some of the other funds. This is why I think the city should catalog who imposes the rules for (all the other) funds and what are the procedures for relief.
Item 3. - This report shows this information
Item 4 - This dollar amount of this information is captured within the Encumbrances column but the specific programs do not appear. One of the things I was looking for was the possibility that we might end up with centrally softened water - technically this wouldn't show up as an encumbrance since the city hasn't decided this is the way they want to go. But I was hoping to see some idea of how much that would cost the city.
One last item, when I wrote, " If the identified $7 million is reserve, as Mr. Jones implied...", I really didn't think there was $7 million in the Sewer Fund. If I am reading this report correctly it looks like at the beginning of the year there was $6.4 million in one of the water funds and $6.1 million in one of the sewer funds. After this year's operations it looks like both will be at about the same level. So my initial skepticism was off by a long shot. The night Mr. Jones said the water fund had $7 million in reserve I added a note to my article concerning the Water Bill stating my concerns about stressing the water fund were contradicted by the city's position (but I still had my doubts). From this information it looks like my concerns were unfounded.
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City Council Member contact information
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References:
My summary of Dec 1, 2100 Administration Committee meeting
Video of Dec 1, 2011 Administration Committee Meeting
Minutes of Dec 1, 2011 Administration Committee Meeting - Should be available after Dec 7th
My article concerning the Water Bill