The millon dollar question

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, June 15, 2004

There was good news and bad news in a discussion of the city’s finances during Monday night’s marathon City Council meeting.

Charlie Polamtier, of the Borland and Benefield firm that assists the city in its finances, said he expects Selma’s total shortfall for the previous fiscal year to be around $1 million.

City councilman Glenn Sexton asked Polmatier just how much the city was going to be in the red.

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“As of the end of the year, September 30, for the total government it’s substantial where I consider it,” Polmatier answered. “It’s shy of a million dollars, but not (quite) there.”

On the other hand, Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. said the city appears to be in a complete turnaround this fiscal year.

“The bottom line is we’re not where we were,” Perkins said. “Right now what we know is we’re running way ahead of the game on our revenue. The economy has turned up and the management is much stronger and I’m beginning to see some numbers that really make sense. I think the city, right now, presently our cash position is we’re probably sitting a million and a half in the good. With our budget to actual cash, we’re running a quarter a million above projections.”

“If he has that much money, how come we’re not paying bills on time?” Sexton asked Tuesday. Sexton alleged he knew of a business in Montgomery and other local businesses that haven’t been paid on time. ‘The public needs to know how bad off we are.”

City auditor Bill Long said he expects to have the final audit of last the last fiscal year available in July.

CPA Sheldon Webster, of Borland and Benefield, added that until the report is released, the numbers are just speculative.

“That’s all preliminary figures, I wouldn’t put too much stock in it,” Webster said. “Until you get a final number all you’re doing is creating a bunch of confusion. It’s very complicated as the mayor pointed out they had four people involved in the one year period. It’s been a challenge.”

That challenge began when Bob Sanders was put on leave at the start of the fiscal year.

The City went through two other people until Cynthia Mitchell was placed in charge of the cities finances.

“There were four people that were the head of our finances. I think everybody in here is aware that we didn’t have that kind of turnover for nothing, there was something seriously wrong with what was going on back there in the finance department,” Perkins said. “It’s

just that we were not getting the kind of financial information that was needed on a regular basis.”

Both Perkins and Webster praised the work Mitchell has done.

“I expect that what’s going to show up in this final report is we’re going to have some deficits this past year,” Perkins said. “I expect that at the end of the day, when you compare where we came from last year to where we are this year, I think you should be quite pleased with your performance.”

Polmatier’s million-dollar number was based on a the actual dollars running two percent under budget and a five percent overspending by the city.

“You’ve got a slight drop off with your revenues then you’ve just got some fixed costs, overtime issues. Some things are just unavoidable, workman’s comp,” Polmatier said.

“I think you’ll see them kick back up this current year.”

Until the fiscal 2002-2003 report is released in July, the numbers are little more than an educated guess according to Webster.

Webster opened his report to the council with a summary of what the city’s finances have gone through.

“Much of what was broken, that I reported in our management letter of March the 25th, 2003, has been corrected,” Webster said,

Webster outlined the troubles in the department that led to four heads of the department in one fiscal year.

The troubles in the department added to the complex new mandated accounting system Gatsby-34, made the city’s annual audit which was due months ago, late.

When Long told the council he expected the report in July, he said the delay was not that unusual.

“I see some faces looking at me kind of funny but this is not unusual most of the cities that have gone and complied with Gatsby 34. They’re getting their reports 7 or 8 months after year end,” he said.

“We had to sit and wait for the records to get to the point they could be audited”

“In the past all of the reports, we’d have the preliminary report in February, by the second week of March (we had the full report),” Sexton said. “This Gatsby thing they knew about it two years ago.”

Sexton later asked Webster what changes the city needs to make.

“In June of 2002, we did an extensive report and we listed a number of things at that time that we recommended to you that you had to address, these were three major items,” Webster said.

Webster said that Borland and Benefield had recommended lay-offs in city personal to get Selma more in line with other cities of a similar size in Alabama.

They recommended contracting out the city’s garbage collection, so that the city then has a fixed cost.

“Right now, that is a huge cash drain,” Webster said.

The third recommendation was to create an in-house service and maintenance operation for the city’s fleet of vehicles.

Sexton said Tuesday that he supported the lay-offs the recommendations.

“You take 50 people with an average of $20,000, that’s a million dollars right there,” Sexton said. “What the mayor tried to do, to keep from laying people off was add to the garbage fee from $8 to $12 a month and he increased the fees on certain licenses from the city.”

“Nobody wanted to lay anybody off,” Perkins said. “You did, I agree with that you said we need to lay off that number of people. We looked long and hard to find additional monies so that we could avoid laying anybody off. They didn’t want to do it and I didn’t either.”