Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
In addition to the hiring of a budget officer to help monitor the county’s finances, Commissioner Betsy Barfield is pressing for implementation of other changes to improve accountability.
At a recent Jefferson County Commission meeting, Barfield shared with colleagues several documents, whose creation she credited to Phil Calandra, a local resident whom she described as a whiz in finance.
Barfield went through each of the five proposed forms, whose adoption she said would help the board keep better tabs on the financial situation. The current reporting system, Barfield said, was simply inadequate, a point that she had been making for months.
“As we try to pull our finances together, and take a look at what is coming in and what is going out, the current reports are not sufficient,” Barfield said. “It’s not anybody’s fault,
it’s just that we haven’t given guidance. And now is the time for us to give guidance.”
She pointed to the first of the five pages that she had distributed, a graphic depiction of an organizational chart, showing departments, constitutional offices and the flow of authority.
The second form that she presented was a statement of revenues, expenditures and changes in the fund balance; a report that she said should mirror the budget.
“This is going to give us a snapshot of exactly where we are in our finance world,” Barfield said. “It’s maybe going to be two or three weeks in arrears, but it will give an opportunity for our budget officer to work on all the transactions that have to be worked on for us. This is something that we need to have every month. And once this is programmed, I think you’re going to find that it’s an amazing document for us to lead the county to a solid financial state. And any accounting software that you have out there is going to be able to do this.”
The third document she shared she called a cost code summary.
“This will give us an idea of how much we’re spending as we’re rolling through our budget year,” Barfield said. “It’s going to give us totals of how much is being spent by each department, in terms of salary, FICA, retirement and such. This will give us a summary as we’re spending the money. It’s different than the budget comparison. This tells us what we are spending. And I think it’s something that’s important for us to know. And again, any accounting software will be able to pull this together for us.”
The fourth form focused on the road bond debt service and the local gas tax revenues. Although not particularly wedded to this form, she still thought that it would provide information that would be helpful to the board in its decision-making, Barfield said. If nothing else, it would show exactly how much money was coming in from gas tax revenues, she said.
“I think that this is something that’s easy to fill out,” Barfield said. “Our budget person can fill it out, or the clerk’s office can fill it out. I think this would be something good.”
Lastly, Barfield introduced a document to address the five-year capital budget.
“This is so important for us to help plan,” Barfield said. “Many times we are dinged on grants because we don’t have the capital improvement plan. This is going to give us a roadmap for what we need to plan, two years, five years or ten years down the road.”
The document, she said, would go with an updated capital improvement element in the comprehensive plan. That way, she said, equipment replacements and other high cost purchases could be planned in advance, instead of board having to react in emergency mode when a high-cost purchase was necessary.
Barfield asked that the commissioners study the forms and be prepared to discuss them at future meeting, with the possibility of adopting most, if not all, of them.
The hiring of a budget officer, proposal of the forms and other proposals are part of the commission’s ongoing effort to gain greater control and oversight of the county’s finances, which have come under question in recent months.
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