MANSFIELD — An $8.4 million budget surplus is the kind of problem any elected official would like to have.
That’s the issue Richland County commissioners worked to resolve on Thursday in their final meeting of 2023, ultimately opting to put more than half of it into the county’s capital expense funds.
“We’re always mindful of taxpayer dollars, but we believe the proposal today accomplishes what taxpayers would want done with any surplus dollars, whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat or independent,” Commissioner Tony Vero said.
(Below is a breakdown of how Richland County commissioners on Thursday opted to use an $8.4 million budget surplus at the end of 2023.)
Ultimately, the three opted to:
— put another $4.3 million into the county’s capital expense fund, raising the account used for improvements to $12.7 million.
— add $1.9 million to the county’s “rainy day” fund, which will enter 2024 with a balance of $6.9 million.
— added $500,000 to the general fund carryover, raising it to $8.9 million going into the new year.
— pay $1 million toward the $18 million still owed in bond debt for the county jail.
— put $500,000 into a newly created special revenue fund that can be used for future “payroll anomalies,” including a 27th pay period in 2032 and unexpected employee payouts due to unforeseen retirements, etc.
A week ago, commissioners approved a 2024 general fund expense plan of $44.6 million, an increase of about $3 million over 2023 — roughly 6 percent.
“We approved increases in every (department) budget that requested an increase,” Vero said. “We had some minor reductions in (salary increase requests). But we even exceeded in most cases our initial guidance of 3 to 4 percent increases.
“We were mindful of inflation. Some offices did request 15% increases. We didn’t give a full 15. But every single county budget that requested an increase received an increase,” Vero said.
“We approved a very reasonable 2024 budget,” he said.
(Below is the Richland County 2024 general fund expense budget as approved by county commissioners.)
Commissioners said they hoped other elected officials and department heads would understand their thought process in creating the new special revenue fund allowed under Ohio Revised Code 5705.13(B) and putting $500,000 into it.
“I hope they would find that it is sound budgeting principles to start setting aside monies for unforeseen (payroll issues),” Vero said. “Imagine if they have an unforeseen (retirement) and they have $20,000 in payouts and we haven’t set aside money for that.”
According to that law, commissioners may “establish a special revenue fund for the purpose of accumulating resources for the payment of accumulated sick leave and vacation leave, and for payments in lieu of taking compensatory time off, upon the termination of employment or the retirement of officers and employees of the subdivision.”
Under that same law, commissioners can later choose to rescind the fund and transfer it back into the general fund.
“It can get pretty costly (for) conversion payments or unknown or unforeseen terminations where you have a fairly healthy payout to an employee that’s has a lot of years of service and it’s not budgeted for,” Vero said.
“Some payouts get pretty substantial,” he said.
“Would they rather have us completely do nothing and then whether we’re here or not, those (future) commissioners go, ‘Oh, we got about $1.5 million extra we’re going to have to budget for.’ Or they say, ‘Hey, thanks to those commissioners who in a good year set some money aside to help offset the costs.’
“So I can’t imagine that they would be upset with that, but I’m not going to speak for (them),” Vero said.