Travis County Commissioners Court
April 28, 2009,
Item
30
Now, let's get the -- before the legislative item, let's see if we can get 30, receive and discuss as necessary the fiscal year 2009 midyear report and take appropriate action.>> morning, judge, Commissioners.
blaine keith with the auditor's office.
every year at this time we bring you a status report of where our revenues are in the budget, sort of the first step looking at next year's budget.
we used the format that we've used for a number of years, the general fund by category and then other funds, just one line for each one.
for the general fund we're running a little ahead as a percentage of budget than we were last year.
we're at 87.9% of our new revenue budget.
last year we were at 87 percent.
for a current property taxes, which is obviously our main source of revenue, we are at 98.9% of budget.
and that's a little more than we were last year at 98.7.
as you recall we were a little bit more conservative in our budgeting this year and that helps our percentage of budget collected at this point.
it's probably no surprise that the category that's killing us is interest revenue.
we tried to allow for what we thought the economy would do.
obviously we were way off.
i guess anyone who would have known exactly what the economy was going to do wouldn't have to work anywhere.
you would have your crystal ball or be in las vegas.
we were just off.
and interest is not going to be nearly as high as we thought.
the other category that we're concerned about and we're watching carefully is the charges for services category.
that's a very large category.
it makes up more than 60% of the revenue line items in the general fund.
and of course anything that's associated with development is down, including things like recording fees and the county clerk's office.
we're seeing that we're behind in some of the things like criminal fees because talking to people it's just that folks just don't have the money to pay some of the things they owe.
it's sort of catch me if you can.
and I wish I could, but I can't right now.
so we're watching that carefully.
one thing that helps us is that we did have a little bigger beginning balance than we had budgeted.
we knew we were being conservative on the general fund beginning balance.
we talked about that at great length.
so we did have a little bigger beginning balance, about 4.5 million.
and so that gives us a little cushion there.
if we're going to be short on the current revenues, and I think there's a pretty good chance we will be.
the other funds are largely falling pretty much the same pattern.
we have a number of them that are supported by civil filings, and those are hurting a little bit because civil filings are just down.
people are not doing what they don't actually have to do.
the exposition center fund is doing well.
i mention that because a number of times I've come to you and said, well, it's behind or something.
they're doing quite well.
so they're bringing in the money and we think we've budgeted much more closely this year.
the road and bridge fund is hurting a bit because again, the fines go through there.
and we're running behind on fines.
again, people don't have the money to pay their citation sometime, so that hurts that fund.
we did have a little bigger beginning balance in that fund.
i think about eight or $900,000 than we budgeted.
so that helps some.
we informed tnr and pbo the problem with what was going on in that fund a couple of months ago.
so just so they would be aware.
one thing I do want to stress, and we mention this a lot when we talk to departments when we started the 2010 process, and that is things are changing very quickly.
because we're at a certain point in our revenue -- the first half of the year, doesn't mean it will be exactly the same in the second half.
things can change.
things can go down or things can pick up again.
we really don't know.
we'll be watching them very carefully, but we encourage people when they submitted their revenues for next year not to assume that the second half of this year was going to be like the first or that this year was going to be like next year.
it's a month by month thing.
so we're following it very closely.
we will give you the first revenue estimate next month.
it will be just the general fund and it's very broad brush.
it will be very much like the one we gave you back in February, the one that was the one pager in the general fund that I gave you and sort of put a bag on my head at the same time saying there's a long way to go.
this will be the first real one.
there will still be several months to go, but it will be our first shot at a revenue estimate.
it will be general fund only.
and we will be glad to answer any particular questions you have.
i'd say overall we're not doing nearly as badly as some other governments.
i wish we were doing better in some areas, but we're not in the case of panic anywhere.
>> we're looking at something close to 50%, hopefully exceeding it, but the more under 50% we are, the worse we're doing, is that correct?
>> in general.
some revenues are psych la kel, -- cyclical, seasonal.
charges for services you would like to be right about 50%.
obviously taxes if we were 50% we would be somewhat concerned at this point.
it varies.
in general, yes, you would like to be at about 50%, but again -- there are two or three little funds that we don't actually put on here because they get revenue once a year.
so you either get zero or 100%.
we figure with as many funds as we have, that probably didn't tell you very much.
so we tend to leave those off of here.
by and large, you like to be around 50% in most areas at the middle of the year.
>> okay.
questions?
this is helpful, I guess, in terms of there's no reason to be opt miss bik about what may happen between now and the rest of the fiscal year, just hope it doesn't get worse.
>> not only are the interest rates going down, keep going down, but also because of the election for the schools, our tax bills went out later.
and some people do pay sentence they get their bill.
a lot wait until December or January, but the cash know is a lot slower this year because the tax office obviously could not it send out the tax bills until they knew what the tax rate was from the schools.
so that was somewhat of an issue.
we didn't have as much to invest.
i think blaine is right.
the taxes come in early and we've got them or we don't.
one of the things sitting out there on taxes, and we still have rebate to samsung and that's being calculated by the budget office.
when we get that we need to subtract that from the revenue here.
samsung.
but what is of concern is that the other revenue sources are going down at a faster rate the last half year.
most of our revenues from taxes so we were lucky in that regard.
but blaine did meet with the kept departments that produce revenues and talked to them so see what they thought rather than talk numbers and what they felt like.
the drought has certainly hurt in parks.
there are things like that going on that really don't have anything to do with the economy that kind of feed into it.
but the interest revenue was huge because we have traditionally have very large fund balances and so interest was a fairly -- I think last year something -- I can't remember if it was the general fund or if it was all funds, but something like $11 million in interest.
and that dropped in '08 to something like eight.
and it will drop further in '09.
so the interest did make a difference.
and our people have done -- the investment office has done a very good job with it.
it's nothing to do with their performance.
they're watching it.
and of course with the government our main goal is the preservation of principal.
we're not out there in exotic investment interest trying to get that up.
they're doing a very good job of watching.
>> I think we'll get a full fiscal picture if we were to have an agenda item either next week or the week after that focused on expenditures.
there's got to be good news in what we budgeted for fuel and inmate, the inmate count.
because we've been substantially under that.
but I don't know what the other news is in line items.
so if we could in the next week or week after that get a report showing that, then we'll have a good feel for expenditures on one hand, revenue on the other.
>> we're currently working on end of year's and compiling that information.
and you're right, we have had good news in terms of the fuel and the utilities and the reserves that we had set up for those.
and so we will be more than happy to provide that information to you.
>> should we think of next Tuesday or two weeks from today?
>> I think the -- my folks are still compiling the end of year's and I'm not sure if that's been completed yet.
so if we could do it maybe a week from Tuesday or a week -- or two weeks from today, that would be -- I think that would provide us with enough time to pull that information.
plus we may be able to kind of give you a real thumbnail sketch for what's been submitted for 2010.
>> I'm hoping for a midyear.
>> yeah.
>> just on the big ones, I wouldn't worry about all of them, but the big line items we ought to know.
>> I'll get with my folks and we'll talk and then coordinate with susan's office as well.
>> okay.
appreciate it.
thank you very much.
there was a couple of silver linings there, blaine.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 6:10 PM