Despite positive outlook, Butler County not planning to spend

BY THE NUMBERS*

*preliminary estimates

Source: Butler County Finance Department

Butler County won’t be going on any spending sprees, despite revenues that climbed $5.2 million higher than anticipated last year, commissioners said.

A preliminary view of what the books looked like for 2015 showed expenses down 2 percent at $86 million, revenues that reached $93 million and sales taxes that jumped from $37 million to $40.5 million, according to Finance Director Tawana Keels.

“Just remember Liberty Center just opened,” Keels said. “So we really haven’t seen the true impact of what Liberty Center will have on our sales tax collections.”

The general fund balance is $28.7 million, according to Keels, which is almost triple the $10.3 million balance the county had in 2012.

The county’s investment income has also increased 35.6 percent to $1.5 million, according to Keels.

Income from the county’s investment portfolio stood at $11.8 million in 2007 and hovered at the $1 million mark in 2013 and 2014.

Butler County Treasurer Nancy Nix, who manages the portfolio with the help of United American Capital Corporation (UACC), said she is cautiously optimistic this revenue stream will continue to climb.

“In spring of 2013 the markets experienced a huge sell-off, but upon the advice of UACC, Butler County stayed the course, did not over-react or change strategy, and prices bounced back. Butler County’s investment income was at its lowest point in 2013 and has steadily increased each year since,” Nix said. “Absent catastrophic global news, we project Butler County’s interest revenue to continue rising with the rising interest rate environment.”

While commissioners still need to remain vigilant since taking a hard line in 2011 to make ends meet, commissioner Cindy Carpenter said it may be time to put money toward capital improvements.

“We went five years struggling to survive to provide the services to the eighth largest county (in Ohio, by population),” she said. “So that’s five years of not investing back to maintain our assets. We have a half billion in assets. We own every county building, every vehicle. As we move forward we are going to have to take the time also to assess where we are with respect to our assets and we may be looking at spending more money.”

The commissioners received $11.7 million in capital requests for this year, and $1.8 million was plugged into the 2016 budget, largely for building repairs and technology upgrades.

Commissioner Don Dixon noted they have taken their debt down from almost $100 million in 2009 to $43 million now and the plan is to be debt-free by 2020. He said they won’t make that goal if they let go of the reins.

“This is not where you can dry off the ball and say, ‘OK we’ve got millions of more dollars than we had and now we can start buying more, we can start paying more and doing more of this and more of that,’ ” he said. “That’s not the case. We need to stay on this schedule.”