By John Estridge
For many years, Franklin County Council robbed Peter to pay Paul.
Peter is the Insurance Fund, and Paul is the General Fund.
That all changed this year as the county council economic advisor Gabe Gerth, of Reedy Financial Group, said the Insurance Fund needs extra cash, $689,000 more than was budgeted for 2020. And projected revenues are going to be less for 2021 than it was for 2020, Gerth said. And that is due, in part, to COVID-19.
With those instructions, the budget workshop took on the need of balancing money for the Insurance Fund with the needs of the General Fund. The General Fund pays most of the bills coming into the county auditor’s office such as payroll and just about all the expenses other than highway. Some of the public safety costs: police, EMS, jail, dispatch and other-related expenses, comes, at least in part, from the Public Safety Fund with some of the dispatch costs coming from the 911 Fund.
FC has a self-funded health insurance policy. After expending a maximum per person – council members said it is $60,000 per person in medical costs – then another insurance policy kicks in for the costs going above that amount.
Employees, who take insurance, pay a certain amount with every pay period with the costs going from individual to family in an escalating amount.
Council member Scott McDonough said there are 110 county employees. People, who pay for a single person, pays $100 per month, $150 for two and $250 per family. The county then pays the rest.
According to Gerth, the county needs to have $1,560,000 in the insurance fund for 2021. The worst case scenario would be $1.8 million. However, the county has cash reserves on hand.
Immediately upon opening the second day of the budget workshop, council voted to freeze all the county employees’ wages at the 2020 level.
Council members then went line by line through all the departments’ budgets and cut whatever could be cut from the total.
On the final morning of the three-day budget workshop, Gerth summarized what had occurred the last two days.
“Most of the funds are balanced,” Gerth said.
He said the cash planned to be moved from the cash reserves set aside and into the General Fund is $400,000 if the worst-case scenario occurs with the health insurance.
“We have it funded, but it’s through cash reserves,” Gerth said.
According to Gerth, if the worst-case scenario occurs, and the county pays down some of the cash reserve, then the county will still have a six-month total of cash reserves on hand.
Gerth said council will have to monitor the General Fund over the next couple of years.
Gerth also said, in any given year, at the end of the year, there is money not spent from the money appropriated for General Fund needs. In FC, that usually runs around 2 percent, or about $150,000, which creates a small cushion.
One item that is used by department heads is additional appropriations. That means when a department has needs over and above the amount that was budgeted for the year, the department head asks for an additional appropriation and that comes, in most cases, from the General Fund. Gerth said any additional appropriations in 2021 have to be reserved for outright emergencies.
“The budget we have is the budget (department heads) have to stick with,” Gerth said. “Additional appropriations are hopefully going to be a thing of the past.”
He said they can be used only for emergency situation.
“You set a budget for a reason,” he said.