Travis County Commssioners Court
July 22, 2003
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Item 35
>> now, we do have a third revenue estimate in item 35. Receive and discuss a third revenue request for the f.y. 2004 budget process. Blaine?
>> judge, Commissioners, [inaudible] county auditor's office. And we do have a third revenue estimate for you today. [inaudible] basic preliminary budget. The general fund, we're estimating $308 million, which is a little more than 3 million more than the second estimate. As you recall there was suggestion [inaudible] so the effective tax rate that we have for m and o [inaudible] the beginning balance a little bit, about $258,000. Some things we have changed. We have lowered our estimate of interest for next year. We were working with [inaudible] and of course the federal reserve has cut rates about 13 times since then. So carolyn got with p.b.o. Staff and worked a new estimate which unfortunately cost us about a million dollars in the general fund. We did move election revenue out of general fund. We discovered there is a law that says you've got collection contracts, you need to have a special fund for them. So if you counted all the funds on your cover sheet, you counted a couple of extra ones in this estimate. One of them is called elections contract fund. So that was simply a case where we moved the revenue and p.b.o. Will move the expenditure. It brings the general fund down, but it's not a real reduction. At p.b.o.'s request we did include the revenue estimate I think four budget request packages. Totals about $320,000. That's all funds. About two-thirds of that was in the general fund. And there is a new increased fee or new fee for the district clerk, civil fee. We've included that. And we included the medical kpaer fees -- examiner fees that you approved. I will have to adjust that in the fourth estimate because I got carried away putting a little too much. When you change the date, I thought I was working with a nine-month and it was an annual figure. I will bring that down a little bit. But we do have the change in fees in there. Originally we did not have the health insurance fund in here. We did deliver something to your offices yesterday. Thanks to the magnificent efforts of diana warner in our office, we finally got comfortable with the number of the revenue to match p.b.o.'s side. For county contributions. So you should have a health insurance fund of about $29.4 million included, and that was what I call autopsy grade yesterday. We had to pass that out. There is a new district clerk records management fund called for by house bill 1905. So that's another new fund that you have. And of course the debt service fund. The rate for that has gone down from 10.58 cents to 9.92 cents since you are using accumulated balances. And I really feel compelled to point out that your favorite fund, the graffiti eradication fund, has been renamed by house bill 1828. So that $50 fund is now the juvenile delinquency prevention fund. We did want to note that so you wouldn't lose track of that one. And we're here, we'll be glad to answer any questions.
>> did I miss hearing you related to the medical examiner's fee. I thought we switched that to a 12-month fee.
>> you did and that's where I made my mistake. I thought it was a nine-month figure. So I included it a little bit so i'll have to deflate it. That was just a hurried mechanical mistake on my part. It was totally my error.
>> we're all saying the same thing.
>> [inaudible] that was kind of complicated, but the amount in the preliminary budget doesn't totally fund what you approved and so there is a shortfall in the fund of, I think it's $1,317,000. And so that's out there for you to decide how you want to handle that. So that fund when you lay the expenditures under it will be short that amount of money. So I didn't want you to think it was fully funded because it is not.
>> I thought the shortage was closer to 500,000. Am I getting too many numbers mixed up?
>> [inaudible] but we lined it up with the p.b.o. Side which was the [inaudible] and 500,000 -- it's a million something.
>> it's 1,160,000 was the final number we came up with. All of that, about $25,000 is in the general fund. We we felt we had to make that revenue match what p.b.o. Had because if they don't budget it to come over to the fund, it's not going to come over.
>> then there's some question about whether some portion of that was coming out of the risk fund related to --
>> I think that was p.b.o.'s strategy. It wasn't budgeted yet so we don't want to show money coming in until we've figured out where that 1.1 is coming from.
>> [inaudible] obviously would change the revenue.
>> that's what it is.
>> questions, comments?
>> thanks.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you.
Last Modified: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 6:52 PM