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State panel lists steps for Campbell to take
By Jeanne Starmack
CAMPBELL
City administrators and employees have a lot of work ahead before they can ask the state for release from fiscal-emergency status.
A state commission that oversees the city’s finances while it is under fiscal emergency met Thursday, and the commission chairman went over a list of what’s left to do.
City council and administrators would like to ask the state by the end of the year for release.
To be able to request that release, the city has to accomplish four tasks:
It has to convert to a different method of accounting called Generally Accepted Accounting Practices, which it is in the process of doing.
It has to take an inventory of all the city’s assets, which it is now doing.
It has to be able to project a positive cash balance in the budget for the next five years, which it has done.
It has to finish correcting problems the state found and listed in a Report on Accounting Methods when the fiscal emergency began in 2004.
In general, the city’s finances look stable, said Paul Marshall, commission chairman.
One problem now is in the water fund, which is showing a large deficit, said Tim Lintner, financial supervisor with the state auditor.
A dispute with Aqua Ohio and a drop in customers are the reasons for the deficit, he said.
Aqua sends the city raw water, which it treats and sells back to Aqua for the company’s customers on the north hill of Struthers, Council President Juanita Rich explained. Rich said Aqua is disputing whether it has to pay for water the city couldn’t provide because of water-main breaks in December. The city’s contract with Aqua requires the company to pay for 400,000 gallons of water a day even if the city can’t provide it, she said.
One problem for the future is how a $2 billion cut in the state’s local-government fund will affect the city’s five-year forecast. The cut means Campbell will lose $32,000 after July this year and $95,000 in 2012. Rich said she is hoping the cut will be revisited before the state approves the budget and that it won’t hit the city as hard.
The Columbus Dispatch reported Thursday that the local- government cuts likely are not to be altered under a House Republican proposal, but Republicans plan to create a new $50 million-a-year fund that governments can draw from to pay for innovative ways to become more efficient and share services.
The city also was ordered to correct 45 deficiencies listed in its Report on Accounting Methods. All government entities that go into fiscal emergency are subject to such a report, Marshall explained.
Twenty-nine of those deficiencies still are not corrected, the list now indicates. They fall under categories of budgetary, chart of fund and account codes, accounting ledgers, revenue activity, purchasing process, cash disbursements, payroll processing, capital assets and supplies inventory, cash management and investing, financial reporting and recording of official proceedings.
Marshall said that once the city converts to GAAP accounting, a lot of the deficiencies will be addressed.