The timing of significant expenditures and delays in some revenue prompted the Scotts Bluff County Board last week to approve an expansion in the number of funds that can be used for cash flow transfers.
Management Accountant Lisa Rien presented a resolution to commissioners to allow up to $1 million to be borrowed from the Capital Improvement fund, in addition to the already approved ability to move money from funds like Keno and Inheritance. Rien said there’s always a resolution to allow the county’s various funds to make loans to each other, but during the prior two fiscal years, there was no need for that flexibility to involve the Capital Improvement fund that’s needed now.
She told the Board she was prompted to bring up the issue because the county’s General Fund was sitting at its lowest level since she’s been in office. “I just was doing some analysis of when we loan money to the different departments from the general fund; what we budgeted and where we ended up, what we budgeted this year. And we’ve already last year, at this time, we had loan or sent money out; or as we do, we move money to the different funds from the general fund,” said Rien. “At this time last year, we moved $2 million, and in this year we’ve already moved $3 million. Road and Bridge has received $1.3 million and the Detention Center $1.4 million, and the Comm Center $600,000.”
Also noted was a three-month delay in federal payments to the Detention Center that had taken place, with an impact of about $300,000 a month. Sheriff Mark Overman told the board once he was aware of the delayed payments for housing federal inmates, he immediately brought it to the attention of the U.S. Marshal Service.
He said the representative he contacted also wasn’t aware of the situation, which apparently happened when a Marshal Service staffer resigned, and those payments fell through the cracks. At least one of the delayed payments has been made to the County, and Overman said he was pressing for the federal government to get those payments current.
