City ends year with six-month reserve

By Angie Thompson/senior reporter

TIFTON — The City of Tifton has enough money in reserves to operate six months and tax collections are going well, according to figures released during a special called meeting held Monday morning at Moultrie Technical College. City council members met and discussed several agenda items, including information about financial projections.

According to Carmina Turner, director of the city’s finance department, the city closed out the 2008 fiscal year, which ran July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008, with $153,486 in the General Fund in excess of expenditures. That amount is added to the cumulative fund balance, which stood at $5.5 million at the end of June. Of that $5.5 million, $4.2 million of which was cash or the equivalent of 4.4 months’ cash reserve, Turner said.

The fund balance reported includes $639,505 that is marked receivable from the city’s telecommunications system, CityNet. If CityNet is sold or that amount is written off for any reason, it would lower the reported General Fund balance.

Turner told city council members that equipment purchased during the year from the Governmental fund were purchased on a “pay as you go basis” and the only additional debt that the General Fund had in 2008, was the loan obtained for construction of Boo Drive behind the Holiday Inn in the amount of $137,945. The city has outstanding loan balances of $1.4 million as of December 2008, the majority of which are loans associated with economic development projects that are funded through hotel-motel tax proceeds. Those include the GMA Leasepool loan from 2006 for $343,426; the I-75/Airport loan for $1.4 million that ends in 2014; and the loan for Boo Drive.

As of Nov. 30, 2008, Turner said, the General Fund had revenues in excess of expenditures of $308,473 and the excess is due to “delaying of small equipment purchases, delay of promotions and a freeze on hiring.”

The city does not anticipate laying off employees, but there are several vacant positions in the General Fund departments. Those vacancies include five police officers. City Manager Mike Vollmer said Tifton Police Chief Jim Smith had been given permission to hire two officers but that three of the vacant positions won’t be filled immediately. There is also one custodian position vacant at the TPD. Vollmer said inmate labor is currently being used to take care of that work.

Also, there are two equipment operator positions, one street superintendent position, one street worker position and one traffic engineer supervisor position vacant. The savings from July through December 2008 of salaries and benefits from those vacant positions totals approximately $178,306, Turner said.

The Local Option Sales Tax and franchise fee collected from Georgia Power are the only major revenue sources that the city can count on through the end of 2009. Business license fees are due in April, Turner said.

Turner reported that the city’s portion of Special Purpose Local Options Sales Tax revenues received in December was $312,087, an increase of 2.59 percent from the same month a year before. The December collections represent October revenues. The year’s collections from SPLOST through December 2008 was down 1.36 percent compared to 2007. The Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) distribution to the city for December, which actually represents October revenue, was $243,078 or 1.22 percent more than October of 2007. The cumulative collection, as compared to the same month in 2007, is down by 1.31 percent.

The city does not anticipate having to lay off any employees.

Vollmer said tax collections were going “extremely well” and that staff members had begun calling some of the tax payers who were late paying their city taxes. Approximately 80 percent of the city’s taxes have been collected.

The City refinanced bonds totaling $10.7 million on CityNet in 2007 and has been paying interest on those bonds since. Those interest payments were $363,097 in 2007 and $478,809 in 2008. This month, the City paid a $239,404 interest loan on the bonds and will pay another $239,404 in interest in July. In January 2010, a $270,000 payment on the principal of the loan will be due.

To contact senior reporter Angie Thompson, call 382-4321.

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