AP Photo Belmont County Prosecutor Kevin Flanagan and Treasurer Kathy Kelich listen to a report about county finances as of the middle of 2023. The county auditor reports an increase in several funds so far.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Belmont County’s budget for the first half of 2023 is on track, and plans for 2024 are shaping up.

On Aug. 9 the county commissioners and other officials met with Belmont County Auditor Cindi Henry, who reviewed the county’s finances with them.

“I just feel as though the county’s on the right track. We’re heading in the right direction, financially,” Henry said.

She said it is too early to speculate about how much money will be carried over to 2024 but reported an increase in carryover going into 2023, at $15,443,605.81 compared to starting out 2022 with $14,951,314.82. She said by November her office should have a better picture of what next year might look like.

Henry noted encumbrances no longer stay in place until the first of the year.

“We’ve changed up how things are done here this past year,” she said. “At the end of every year, if entities have purchase orders that are still open we’re requiring them to close them and reopen them at the beginning of the year. What that does is frees up all the cash that we have available. When we did that this year and took care of everything, we actually had an additional $500,000.”

Henry also said some departments did not spend the volume of money in 2022 that they normally do.

“We watch the cash every year to make sure it doesn’t go down significantly. If it goes down significantly, we’ve got to find out why, because we’ve got to live off of that cash carryover for the first three months of the year. That’s our actual revenue that we have until our tax collections come in,” she said.

Another source of funding is tax proceeds from the state’s legal casino gambling, which Henry said increased by $11,000 last year. Henry said from January to June of this year, the county is collecting at the same level as last year and so should have about the same amount by the end of 2023. In 2022 the county received $945,164.77 with $476,789.34 the first half of the year. In 2023 the county has collected $488,180.22 so far.

“The commissioners are currently using it — it’s my understanding — on debt. They’re paying off the county debt with it. It’s not coming into the main stream of revenue,” she said.

Henry said the sales tax revenue also increased by close to $700,000 the first half of this year compared to last year at the same time.

“Hopefully that’ll keep trending the same way also,” she said. “I think we’re on an uptick with collections of revenue.”

She noted sales tax collected in 2022 came to $12,149,699.41 with $6,874,819.92 by the end of June. As of the end of June 2023, sales tax collected was $7,435,025.89.

She added that local government funding has decreased, with $2,144,462 expected last year compared to $2,252,426 in 2022; however, this is still an increase from 2020-2021.

The county is given an allotment at the end of July, which is disbursed among cities, villages, townships and park districts.

“We’ll keep a close eye on that. It’s pre-determined by the state,” she said.

Henry speculated the disbursement would be more efficient if park districts could eventually be absorbed into their municipalities, since park districts are often issued about $10,000 a year and a significant portion goes toward fees and the required yearly audit. That decision would be up to the state.

“That allocation needs to be designated to whatever entity (the park district) lives within, be it a city, a township or whatever, and let that entity have that money denoted separately so they can use it for that park. That would alleviate the additional clerk’s cost and the audit cost,” she said, noting a district often pays about $2,000 for a clerk’s services and up to $3,000 for an audit.

Henry also raised the issue of her office’s software, saying the auditor’s office uses software that is more than 20 years old, making it difficult to connect with the systems of other entities.

“Other counties have moved over to different (systems) altogether,” she said.

She said the software for county auditors is not uniform across the state.

“It’s very convoluted,” she added.

Henry said the state uses Universal Accounting Network software, which Henry said is not yet perfected for county use. she said an upgrade to her office’s software would cost $500,000 to $750,000.

Henry also plans to bring the county Geographic Information Systems department into her office.

“A great portion of the county auditors house the GIS department, because they work so much in connection with our engineering office and our real estate division. Our current GIS office is located out at the engineer’s building on U.S. 40 by Lloydsville. I want to bring them in-house because the mapping’s in-house — the engineer has that — our real estate’s in-house.”

The Belmont County Board of Commissioners will begin holding budget hearings with county departments soon, to be completed before the end of the year.