City finance director presents fiscal report for end of FY23
At Monday’s Toccoa City Commission Meeting, Toccoa Finance Director Becky Bohannon presented the June finance report to commissioners.
June was the final month of the 2023 Fiscal Year. Fiscal years are named using the year when the period ends. For instance, the fiscal year that runs from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, is called FY24.
Bohannon pointed out that the end-of-year audit was still in progress, and presented a few highlights from the report, including the June 2023 cash balances, which included $934,142 in operating cash, $3,565,917 in reserves, and $6,201,834 in SPLOST, for a total Cash on Hand balance of $10.7 million.
She detailed the amount of debt paid off in FY23 and mentioned that the Natural Gas Bonds would be paid off in full in June 2024. The Natural Gas Bond payment for FY23 was $1,865,000, leaving $1.3 million to pay off in FY24 to retire the debt. A total of $306,510 was paid toward the GMA Lease Pool debt, for a total debt retirement of $2.2 million dollars for the fiscal year.
She then listed some highlights from the General Fund from FY23, including the purchase of two commercial mowers, a brush truck, and a compact excavator for the Public Works departments and three new patrol cars for the police department.
The Lake Toccoa Event Facility, which records revenue and expenses for the Lake Toccoa Fund, increased event attendance by more than 10 percent from the previous fiscal year, with revenue of $169,029 – up more than 2 percent from the previous year. The event facility also completed the bridal suite at the Reflections facility this past spring.
Bohannon then itemized the grant fund receipts and expenditures throughout the fiscal year.These included:
- A Georgia Council for the Arts Grant for $6,000 that brought 1,704 individuals to the Historic Ritz Theatre and funded 10 shows;
- A Fox Theatre Institute Block Booking Grant for $1,430 that brought Katie Deal’s “Silver Belles” Christmas Show to the Ritz
- A $1,500 South Arts Presentation Grant that brought the first Annual Toccoa Ritz Bluegrass Festival, in partnership with the Edgar Loudermilk Band, to Toccoa, with a total of five bands and more than 350 attendees. Plans are underway to expand the 2024 Bluegrass Festival to three days.
A total of nine downtown Facade Grants were awarded in FY23, for a total of $66,185.26.
Financial performance of the city’s utility departments was discussed next.
In the just-completed fiscal year, highlights for the city’s utilities departments included the completion of Phase 1 of the Eastanollee Creek Wastewater project, which is now moving into Phase II. A new storage building for water distribution, a drilling tapping machine for the gas fund and the acquisition of a dump truck were other highlights from the utilities departments.
Following the meeting, WNEG News spoke with City Manager Billy Morse about his thoughts on the city’s fiscal performance during the just-completed fiscal year.
“I believe we have had an extremely good fiscal year,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of projects done that I think are of benefit to the community. We paid off some debt and we are going to be able to reduce the millage rate here soon, so i think that all adds up to a very positive fiscal year. I think we’ve got a good team, a good budget and a good business plan and I think we’re able to achieve our goals and meet all our financial obligations.You don’t get everything you want, but that’s just nature. Same with folks at their homes, they don’t get everything they want; you don’t get to get a new car every year, you have to budget for it and I think we’ve done a really good job of that. I think we’ve especially done a good job of getting grant funds and managing the stimulus funds that have come from the federal government.”
Morse then discussed the goals and challenges for the coming fiscal year, which includes paying off the Gas bonds, toward which the city has been paying about $2 million per year for about 25 years.
“The biggest goal is to get the Gas Bonds paid off,” he said. “We’ve got the last payment of those bonds budgeted and that will happen this next fiscal year. Challenges are, our equipment is aging, and replacing that is always difficult. We’ve got funds budgeted to continue to replace those aging equipment and vehicles, but it’s just a multi-year project to get that done.”
The full June financial report is available on wnegradio.com.
For more information on the city’s financial performance, contact Bohannon or Morse at 706-886-8451.