2017 good financial year for Moses Lake

MOSES LAKE — 2017 was a pretty good year for Moses Lake and the financials seem to be proof of that.

During Tuesday night’s council meeting the council received, and ultimately approved and accepted so it can be filed with the state Auditor’s Office, the city’s 2017 year-end financial report. Across all city funds in 2017, Moses Lake collected a total of $62 million and expended $57.9 million, which resulted in a net increase of $4.3 million in total reserve balances for all funds. The majority of increases were in capital improvement funds, due to the water/wastewater utilities being between major projects.

The city’s general fund added about $150,000 to its fund balance. The total reserve balance in the fund was $3.68 million at the start of 2017 and $3.83 million at the end of the year.

“Which is 16.8 percent of the 2017 expenditures. The target and the recommended best practice is to have 16.7 percent, which is a 60-day reserve of the general fund. So we are there at this point,” Finance Director Cindy Jensen told the council.

A number of the city’s main revenue streams also saw increases. Revenue from property taxes increased by about 3.6 percent, which can be explained by the 1 percent increase in the base levy, new construction of around 2.5 percent and an overall improvement in the county’s collection rate.

The biggest contributors to the growth were revenue streams from sales tax (new construction) and utility taxes, as there was an internal tax rate increase from 8 percent to 10 percent. The only negatives in the report brought up by the council concerned revenue streams from fines and penalties, which is comprised mainly of fines generated via the city’s red light cameras, and the ambulance service.

Two of the city’s four Redflex cameras, which are located in school zones and managed by the Moses Lake School District, were out of order for about half of the year due to mechanical issues. The city wasn’t being billed during that time for the cameras and there was no revenue coming in.

When it comes to the city’s ambulance service, and by extension the Moses Lake Fire Department, the department went over budget by about $275,000 “primarily due to paying for some ambulance expenditures that the separate fund couldn’t cover. We were able to do that this year because of salary savings in other divisions in (the) general fund and the growth in sales tax revenue,” reads city documents. Jensen said with some recent changes that have been made she believes the ambulance fund will break even in 2018.

“We think when we penciled everything out at the beginning of the year that (it) should come pretty close. But this also prevented a new interfund loan, so just the fact that they didn’t do an interfund loan we are kind of starting to dig out of that hole. So (the) general fund was able to cover it so we let them cover some of that ambulance operation this year,” Jensen explained to the council.

Even with the ambulance-related expenditures, general fund expenditures as a whole were below the 2017 budget by about $230,000, or 1 percent. If there was no ambulance subsidy, the general fund would have ended 2017 at about $505,000, or 2.2 percent. In total, the ambulance fund used $100,000 of it’s beginning balance to end 2017 with about $159,000.

“Ambulance fund was underspent by about $187,000 because ongoing revenue was not supporting the expenditures, and the fire department covered some of this cost. The revenue budget included $800,000 for an interfund loan which was not executed because (the) general fund had the capacity to cover the costs,” read city documents.

Overall, the council was complimentary of the job city staff did in 2017 and unanimously passed a motion to accept the 2017 year-end report.