Error brought SPLOST windfall
Fannin County recently received an additional approximately $700,000 in SPLOST funds due to a statewide error that results in misappropriated funds between 2015 and 2018.
“We did receive a real windfall from the state,” Chairman Stan Helton said during a Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday, October 27. “This was a statewide error. It was not an error in Fannin County’s reporting, but the state went back over the years 2015 through 2018 and found that there was an error from a firm … but there was a reporting error that they caught, and so we were the beneficiaries of those funds.”
Helton explained that the county is currently 75% into the 2020 budget, and the county is 1% under budget.
The largest overage reported is seen in Risk Management. The county had budgeted $1,550,000 for Health Claims and $300,000 for General Liability. Currently, the county has paid out $2,028,302 in Health Claims and $339,903 in General Liability.
As of July 1, the county became fully insured rather than partially self-funded, which should make it easier to budget for Risk Management in the future.
“For the cost year-to-date, we are running significantly over what was budgeted, and quite honestly, the budgeted amount was too low,” Helton said. “I’ll take the responsibility for that. We should have been a little more aggressive in what we budgeted for this year, but when you go self-insured you don’t really know. Going forward, those numbers, you may lose the opportunity, if you have savings, which is the idea to go to self-insured that the county did four years ago actually, but going forward the budgeted amounts, when you have that each month, will be more of a stair step, equal number during the year and not as likely to go over.”
A few offices are also over budget, including the fire department, which is $33,590 over due to lease payments, the Sheriff’s Office, which is $54,389 over and the Detention Center, which is over $4,249 due to salaries, uniforms and capital outlay projects. Helton said that these overages are a result of payment timing, and he anticipates that the numbers will decrease as the year continues.
The Public Works and SPLOST Public Works budgets are significantly under budget at this time because the county made the decision to cease certain projects during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to save money.
The financial report showed Public Works is $168,192 under budget, and SPLOST Public Works is $1,102,098 under budget.
However, LOST and SPLOST collections are up for the month of August compared to last year, however this is partially due to the aforementioned windfall from the state. The county collected $796,361 in LOST and $1,051,295 in SPLOST in September for the month of August.
“That’s related to the tourism business,” Helton said. “People can have their thoughts about seeing a lot of cars, a lot of tourists, a lot of people up here, we understand the negatives with that. But, when it looks at the revenue and what that does to help the county financially, there’s certainly a big plus on that.”