That’s the word from Suzanne Steckel of Zumbahelen, Eyth, Surratt, Foote & Flynn, who presented the village’s financial audit, ranging from May of 2015 to April of 2016, during a special meeting on Tuesday.
Steckel says having plenty of money in reserves is fantastic news for the village.
“I start getting nervous for my villages that have less than three months. When you guys have over a year, we are still looking good. Of the $3.8 million in total fund balance, $2.2 of that is restricted for specific purposes. The biggest one is the TIF district at $1.5 million,” says Steckel.
When it came to the village’s revenues and expenditures of governmental funds, Steckel broke down the balance’s net change.
“All government funds showed a profit of around $330,000. Last year it was a loss of $240,000, which is a swing of about $570,000. The biggest portion of that was $380,000 out of the TIF fund used to improve roads. There was a big expenditure last year on infrastructure that you didn’t have this year.”
South Jacksonville is dealing with a couple new receivable and payable items in this budget
“There was $185,000 for the road district and $40,000 for ambulance funds. Sitting in the general fund was all the E-Pay collections. That $115,000 sitting there is really owed to a couple of funds. Most of it is water and sewer. This is where everyone pays there bills online. It requires a manual transaction in the village to be moved into the water and sewer account. The money is all there, it just didn’t get transferred to the appropriate fund,” says Steckel. :
Steckel says the water fund saw a loss of $15,000 and the sewer fund took a $37,000 hit. Total expenses in sewer increased by almost $175,000. Around $80,000 of that increase was due to the sewer contract and the rest fell under major repairs from dated equipment.
Here are some other notes from the presentation…
Overall revenue from proprietary funds went up $165,000 and expenses rose $195,000.
Enterprise funds lost about $30,000 in the latest budget, compared to just $1,200 the previous year.
South Jacksonville has around seven months of cash in reserves designated for “business type activities.”
The village’s Equalized Assessed Value went up by almost $550,000, which Steckel says will show big gains once property taxes are added up. Around $50,000 from property taxes was collected by the village, and that number includes money from the tax increment financing extension.
To hear the entire audit presentation, click below.