On a recent night, it was cold, dreary and I passed the time reviewing the City’s Annual Financial Report. Yeah, I’m a bit of a nerd about stuff like that. Anyway, the report totals a staggering sixty-two pages. Why, just the summary fills five, but detailed on those pages is the fate of every dollar that enters the City’s coffers – over $79,000,000 of them. That was the total revenue in 2018; taxes, grants, and utility revenue. On a lark, I started to count the various accounts but quickly ran out of fingers and toes. Keeping an eye on our finances is a massive undertaking – and that’s not all they do in the Clerk-Treasurer’s office.
Mary Beth McGookey as our Clerk-Treasurer is responsible for all the financial aspects of the city. Things like recordkeeping, budgets, payroll, tax reports, insurance, accounts payable, bond payments, not to mention all the various grants. As the custodian of municipal records, she keeps and files the minutes of the Common Council and the Board of Public works, every contract, grant agreement, insurance policy, bond document, and land acquisition record. Luckily, Mary Beth has excellent help in Kathy McLin, Dawn Holland, Kim Loyd, Sherri Ray, and Peg Stevens.
As if this were not enough work, the small cadre also serves as the City’s HR department. Washington has 160 regular employees and hires a large number of summer employees. For each, Uncle Sam requires a mountain of paperwork – small things like W-4 withholding forms, Immigration I-9’s and E-verify, insurance, and retirement plan forms. The City Health Plan itself is a paperwork jungle; that’s Kathy McLin’s area of expertise and has been for nearly twenty-five years. She is considering retirement, so Dawn Holland has been learning the job.
The Indiana State Board of Accounts dictates how these records are prepared and reported. A lot is done through the state’s “Gateway” software. You can view these reports at https://gateway.ifionline.org/. In addition to the financial statements, the state also requires that all the minutes and contracts be filed electronically. Although the reporting is online, paper copies of everything have to be maintained from the date of the last audit, which in Washington’s case was four years ago. Many documents like the minute books are retained from the beginning of time. As you can imagine, the space to store these records is in short supply. That’s a problem that will soon need to be rectified.
The utility office tracks each utility’s expenses, which are then submitted to the Clerk-Treasurer to process with the rest of the claims. Twice a month the claims are tabulated, reviewed for accuracy and then provided to the Council and to Board of Works for approval. That’s $2 to 3 million in bills every meeting. Once they are approved, the Clerk Treasurer’s office prints and mails the checks. Every payday, the office processes payroll. Each employee is paid, and all the withholdings are reported and paid to the proper agencies. Like I said, HR is a big part of the job.
That’s just the day to day stuff. Once a year the city also prepares a budget. The process begins with Mary Beth estimating what funds will be available. Of course, this is relatively easy for the utilities, as they can consult rate history. Guessing the tax revenue for the civil side of the city budget, however, is more difficult, and requires the Clerk-Treasurer has to use her crystal ball to estimate what will come in from taxes like property, cigarette, LIT, EDIT, gas, and a range of smaller tax pots. In recent years the property tax circuit breakers, or tax caps, have complicated property tax forecasting. In Washington, nearly 30% of the property tax bills are reduced by the circuit breakers. Once the revenue estimates are available, the department heads meet with the Mayor to identify their needs and to finalize a budget that fits within those estimates.
Fortunately, Washington’s department heads do a good job keeping their expenditures within their budgets. Although that often requires Beth to “Find money,” – to figure out how to move money from one line item to another and then get Council approval.
Washington has capital assets totaling more than $121 million. That’s the combined value of things like land, infrastructure, buildings, machinery, equipment, and vehicles. Making sure these assets are adequately insured also falls to the clerk treasurer’s office, as does titling, and keeping registrations and license plates current.
It makes my head spin to think of everything this office does to keep Washington a great place to live. Thanks for doing such a fantastic job.
Keep Washington moving forward.
David Dahl