City finds less red ink than budgeted

The red ink represents cash out over cash in, and it includes $713,054 in reserve funds spent during the year, most of it ($432,064) from the Water and Sewer Fund.

“Contrast that to the budget in which we planned to use right at $1 million in reserve funds,” Wascher told the council. “We didn’t need to use quite the reserves we planned to.”
The result is less red ink than budgeted.

Some of those reserve funds have been awaiting use for some time — $97,875 in library expansion funds, for example, and the more than $170,000 in SPLOST revenue, which has accumulated over the years.

On the operational side, the city managed to finish $444,687 in the black, according to Wascher’s figures. While the Water and Sewer fund was nearly $96,000 in the red, the Electric Fund was black by almost $140,000, and the General Fund by $258,000. The Gas Fund broke even, he said.

While the city has used reserve funds to stay afloat during the economic downturn, that strategy has its limits. During the discussion earlier this year over the 2011-12 budget, several council members expressed concern that the city’s reserves built up over the years are being rapidly depleted during the current weak economy.