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New plan will avert Campbell shutdown
By Jeanne Starmack
CAMPBELL
The city is no longer facing a shut-down by the end of the year because city and state officials have made budget changes to keep it operating.
The changes involve moving expenditures from the strapped general fund to other funds, said city finance director Sherman Miles.
In a meeting Thursday, city officials met with representatives from the state auditor’s office and Paul Marshall, the chairman of a commission that oversees the city’s finances while it is in fiscal emergency.
The city had until Monday to present to the commission a plan that outlines how it will bring spending in line with its budget. The city was overspending in some departments. That overspending and income-tax collections’ being behind by $100,000 have put the city in a precarious financial position for the year.
The commission was threatening court action if it did not receive the plan.
Marshall said Monday that a financial supervisor from the auditor’s office at Thursday’s meeting wrote the plan to fulfill the commission’s order.
Marshall said the proposal, which has to be voted on by council before it’s official, does not solve the city’s problem in the long term. It still cannot project balanced budgets for the next five years.
“We’ll be able to squeak through this year,” he said, calling the plan “mostly just accounting changes.”
Mayor George Krinos said he believes it’s good news that the city has enough money to keep operating. “A lot of extra money was not being used,” he said.
Finance Director Sherman Miles said he’s concerned because the plan “raids other funds” but doesn’t reduce expenditures.
The changes in the budget are one-time moves, he said.
“In 2011, there will be no more funds to raid,” he said.
He also said that if the other funds get into trouble, money from the general fund will have to go back to them.
The city will use $157,000 from other funds for general-fund expenses, Miles said. The largest chunk is $87,000 in the recycling fund. Miles said the money was being saved for a salt bin that will be required by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, though he doesn’t know if the entire $87,000 would be needed for the bin.
Other funds involved are sales tax and development, which will absorb $25,000 spent in the general fund for an emergency house demolition; a $20,000 cash carryover from the safety forces levy; and $13,500, which is more set aside than is needed in the state police and fire pension.
There is also a plan to save $11,000 in the police budget by assigning an officer to the park for the rest of the year.
Miles said $64,000 of the $157,000 will go toward a firefighter Krinos recalled though there were no funds allocated to pay for him and for a full-time secretary in the mayor’s office. Krinos was supposed to give up his health benefits to pay for the secretary, but began taking them again in March.