County sees 2008 surplus

On the surface, the numbers show that 2009 will start out well for Crawford County.

According to preliminary estimates, the county will have a $1.2 million carryover from 2008 to the 2009 budget year.

“That is a little higher than we anticipated,” said Crawford County Clerk Don Pyle. “During our budget meetings for the 2009 budget, we had figured about $900,000.”

That registers to good news, considering the economic state of the nation that has seen consumer confidence low and spending just as low.

“It is good news and it means that everyone is spending under their budget,” said Crawford County Treasurer Joe Grisolano. “It also means that our revenues are as well as projected.”

Pyle said the additional carryover comes from money the county collected from the previous year.
“It is kind of a cushion to carry us over from year to year,” Pyle said.

The use of the carryover is specific.

“If need be, there can be emergency needs or if aid money does not come though that is supposed to, we can use that carryover as emergency cash funds,” Pyle said.

The unknown is state and federal aid that the county may receive for different projects.

Of that $1.2 million carryover, there may still be some outstanding bills received by the county that will be paid for over the first three months of 2009 out of the 2008 budget.

But it does include a drawdown of approximately 10 days of county payroll that will be billed at the end of January 2009 but taken off the 2008 budget.

“I would not think that more than $100,000 or $200,000 will be left to be expensed,” Pyle said. “There may be something that a department may have purchased that has not been billed for yet but, I can’t imagine that it will be too much.”

With Crawford County Commissioners enacting a 1.341 mill levy increase in the 2009 budget — up to 45.234 mills in 2009 from 43.893 mills in 2008 — there may be some relief for taxpayers when the 2010 budget is prepared.

“It should help us not to have to budget as much as we are going into making the 2010 budget,” Pyle said. “If we have more in the cash carryover, we should not have to levy as much in taxes for 2010.”

However, if the Kansas Legislature makes any cuts in state aid that has been budgeted by the county, the cash carryover could be used to offset the cuts made by the state.

“It depends on what the legislature does with state funding and those kinds of things,” Grisolano said. “It is too early in the budget year to really get into that.”

One of those cuts could come from the slider fund used to reimburse government entities for business machinery taxes.

In 2009, Crawford County budgeted $40,000 to be received from the state from that slider fund.

“It should be more than that but we did a conservative estimate on it,” Pyle said. “If we hadn’t included that we would’ve had to increase our mill levy even more.”

Those conservative estimates could be the best thing for the county, if state aid falls short of 2009 projections.

“We hope we were not overzealous with our budgeting,” Pyle said. “When push comes to shove, that additional funding can always be withdrawn.

“We should know a lot more about when we get into the first part of the year.”

Early on, however, the prospect of having upwards of $300,000 in additional cash carryover is seen as a positive by county officials.

“There are some different funds that had less than projected and some had more,” Pyle said. “Luckily we just had more and we hope that it will end up being a good thing.”

Matthew Clark can be reached at matthew.clark@morningsun.net or at 620-231-2600, Ext. 140.