County should rebate surpluses

Editor:

Madison County has undisclosed budgetary assets of $4 million that could be used to rebate the county taxes to unemployed individuals and the general population. I reviewed the external audit report for the county’s 2008 financial statements. It explicitly stated that, as of June 30, 2008, the county carried over just above $4 million in its general fund.

These unappropriated funds have not been disclosed as a funding resource in any of the budgetary statements prepared for the 2010 budget year. Furthermore, the 2009 county budget has programmed an additional carryover of $1 million. Consequently, the county could carry over, to July 2009, as much as $5 million to be used for any project approved by the board of supervisors.

The taxpayers and the board need to correct this situation. In lean times we should not have excess funds lying to fallow in the county treasury.

I suggest that the supervisors restate their budgetary proposals to include and account for the carryover so that the taxpayers can clearly see fallow funds or the disposition of these carryover funds. The actual column of the 2008 budget year needs to be adjusted to show actual unexpected federal revenue increases of $3 million and the approximately $800,000 under expenditure of budget funds as reported by the auditor. These corrections would help taxpayers to realistically measure expansion of expenses from 2008 to 2010.

I also suggest that the supervisors reconsider their final cuts to the education budget. The board of education obviously “got the message” from the state cuts and proposed a drastically reduced budget to supervisors.

The school board finally requested a $75,000 increase in the county’s contribution to their 2010 budget. A well-intentioned board of supervisors reduced that request to zero.

Given the potential $5 million surplus in the treasury, it seems pointless to force the education system to further cut important programs such as summer school classes. The supervisors should restore that cut, allocate some additional funds to the transition program and fix the schools’ heating problems.
With whatever funding is left (and I suspect that it will be large) I suggest that the finance committee be redirected from defining new and unnecessary tax programs (for example, the transient tax) to defining how best this newly disclosed excess can be used to help unemployed and income impacted county residents through a tax rebate program.

Frank Stidman
Madison