Grant County is borrowing money

EPHRATA — An unexpected drop in revenue has forced Grant County to borrow money from other funds to keep operating.

The county’s current expense fund is out of money after receiving $2 million less revenue than it expected at the end of 2009, Treasurer Darryl Pheasant said. The drop was after county departments came in $1 million under budget.

The current expense fund pays for several county departments including the sheriff’s office, the county jail, the treasurer’s, assessor’s, auditor’s and prosecutor’s offices. The county expected to go into 2010 with $700,000 in reserves.

“Then we have about $400,000 more in expenses that came in after the budgets were turned in,” Pheasant said. “They still spent within their budgets, but we were looking at trends. We weren’t expecting the increase.”

The decline in revenue came in from every revenue source and combined with the unexpected increase in spending, emptied the current expense fund, forcing the county to borrow money from other areas.

“It’s just based on the national economy,” Pheasant said. “We experienced the same things that everyone else did, so it’s not anything particular to Grant County.”

Commissioner Cindy Carter said the county is likely to take the money evenly from other funds. When the county has more funds, it will be able put it back from where it was ?borrowed.

The county is likely to see money start coming back into it’s current expense fund once the property tax payments are processed.

“It’s all contingent on our largest taxpayer (REC Silicon,)” he said. “If they pay in April, then we’d be out by May. If they pay in May, then we’d out by June … The question is, does it get to our office in April or does it get to our office in May?”

The borrowing is unlikely to have a long term affect on the budget, Pheasant said. The county is required to pay interest on the money it borrows from other funds, but the interest payments go back into the current expense fund.

“It’s a zero budget effect,” he said.

In an attempt to stop a similar problem next year, the county is trying to increase the reserve in the current expense fund to $1.7 million, Pheasant said.

“We should try to strive to get double that for cash flow needs, but we aren’t able to do that all in one year” he said. “We strive to have at least a 10 percent carry over, $1.7 million will put us at a 5 percent carry over.”