The Highlands Board of Commissioners will sit down for a budget work session at 3 p.m. today. The first draft of the town’s 2021-22 budget will be available for the board to review.
Town manager Josh Ward and finance director Rebecca Shuler offered the board a glimpse of some good news regarding the current fiscal year budget during a recent meeting.
As of April 1, the Town of Highlands is outpacing its current revenue projections for the year despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When you look at the two major sources of revenue for the town, property tax collections are up roughly $90,500 compared to the fiscal year prior and sales tax revenue is up $24,470 from year prior,” Shuler said. “Our tax collection rate is 98.32 percent. Overall, revenue is up $114,707 compared to last year.”
Ward noted that the town had taken a very conservative budgeting approach in 2020 due to the onset of COVID-19. While the pandemic did have an impact, it was mitigated by decreased spending and the cutting of non-essential projects.
“Last April, May and June when we were working on the budget we had no idea what to expect as far as the local and regional economy were concerned,” Ward said. “We had businesses that were closed, people who weren’t working, so we kept last year’s budget very close to the vest.”
Even with the tightened purse strings, Ward pointed out that the town did fund the construction of a new fire station on Franklin Road and is nearing the completion of the town’s broadband network project.
The town’s fund balance sits at approximately $1.8 million, up from $1.47 million at the close of the prior fiscal year.
Shuler noted that the water enterprise fund and the sewer enterprise fund are both on pace to bring in more revenue than their budgeted expenditures for the year. The electric utility enterprise fund is also on pace to make a profit for 2020-21.
The one town fund that is in the red currently is the sanitation fund, which has spent $140,000 more than it has taken in as of April 1.
“Sanitation is a fund that we need to make sure is balanced at the end of the year so with the help of Lamar (Nix) we will be monitoring that closely as we finish the current fiscal year,” Shuler said. “He has put some cost cutting measures in place to bring expenditures down and we hope those will be effective.”
Following today’s meeting of the board, the budget will be reviewed during the regularly scheduled commissioners meeting in May and scheduled for a public hearing. The board will pass the final 2021-22 fiscal year budget in June and it will take effect on July 1.