County revenues on track

EPHRATA - Grant County stopped using registered warrants and is near its revenue predictions for the year.

Grant County Treasurer Darryl Pheasant reported sales tax is slightly below projections and property taxes are above projections.

"The county is out of registered warrants as of May 1, so we're happy," he said. "With the current balances that we have, it looks quite sufficient to not have to go back onto registered warrants for the rest of the year."

The county started using registered warrants last year, borrowing money from other departments for the current expense fund. The current expense fund includes district, superior and juvenile courts, the assessor's, treasurer's, auditor's, prosecutor's, sheriff's and clerk's offices as well as the department of community development.

"As soon as the April tax collections got officially credited to the current expense fund, then we were definitely back into a positive cash flow," Pheasant said.

The county depleted its reserves in 2009, forcing it to use the registered warrants when the current expense fund ran out of money. The commissioners planned to add $2.4 million to the reserve in the current expense fund to avoid the problem in the future.

"With the extra money increased for our carryover reserve, next year we hopefully should avoid registered warrants," Pheasant said. "The numbers are coming in that we're happy (with.) It looks like everything is going fine."

The treasurer said the revenues he tracks are coming in as predicted, but they were still conservative.

"It wasn't something that we really reached hard and over inflated numbers and hoped they happened," he said. "So far (things are better this year), we're cautious. We're happy to see the numbers so far. It looks like there's been a good hold on expenses."