The Century Town Council approved town CPA Robert Hudson's proposal to amend the budget for 2019-2020 Tuesday night and schedule a workshop to finalize it, as a corrective measure to the county's Grand Jury findings declaring the town is in financial emergency last summer.
Hudson said some items cost more than the town budgeted for and suggested an operating transfer into water sewer for their debt payment coming up and an operating transfer into the gas fund for debt payments to be made. He said there was some equipment the town had to purchase for capital outlay, and didn't know how much it was going to spend.
Hudson told council members the town can do an operating transfer from LOST (Local Option Sales Tax) funds into the water department for that additional expense.
He assured council members that with $125,000 that it doesn't have to pay out of operations, plus $98,000 that it doesn't have to pay for debt service, plus $25,000 it doesn't have to pay for debt service, the town should be able to show that the council has designated an excess of $200,000 to go into a reserve fund.
“It's a way to utilize that bucket of money, because we have the asset management plan coming up and along with that plan, there's going to be needs of money periodically that will have to go back into the asset management,” said Hudson. “We are now putting back into reserves those monies that may be needed so we will have money to pull out of to stay up to date on the asset management plan.”
Hudson said about $250,000 a year that goes into the fund and it has built up to almost $1 million now.
Councilman James Smith made a motion to approve the preparation of the amended budget for 2019 to 2020 to reflect payments out of the LOST funds including the capital outlay to the water fund of around $125,000 and schedule a follow-up workshop in spring to approve the amended budget. The motion was seconded by Councilman Luis Gomez. The motion carried.
