Comprehensive Finance Plan Gets Glen Board Approval

By Charlie Feldman

cfeldman@timestribunenews.com

The Glen Carbon village board accepted a report on last year’s finances to be submitted to the state and took other actions at its Tuesday, July 27 meeting.

The board approved the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and related documents for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2019.  All documents had been previously presented to and approved by the Finance and Administration Committee on July 13.

“There were some unique challenges this year,” said Finance Director Scott Borror. “We had some staffing challenges with both the villager and the Sikich team during this process which caused us to have to get a 30-day extension from the state comptroller before we could finish the process.

“I’d like to point out to the general public that this is a process that we as a village voluntarily enter into,” he said at an earlier meeting. “We engage an outside firm – in this case Sikich LLP – to review not only our financial statements but also our quality aspects of our village’s operations, specifically internal controls, and to show that proper safeguards are in place to pick out good investments.”

As with last year’s report, Sikich gave it an unmodified rating, meaning that everything was fairly stated.

At the close of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020,  the total assets of the village of Glen Carbon exceeded total liabilities by $50,009,800 (net position), the report said. This figure includes assets, deferred outflows of resources, liabilities, and deferred inflows of resources. It reflects the combined total for both governmental and business-like activities. The net position improved by $253,474 from the previous fiscal year, which equates to 0.5 percent, according to the report.

On the strength of investment income, the Net Position of the Police Pension Fund increased $1.6 million to a total of $10.7 million. This represents a 17.2 percent increase from the previous audited period. By surpassing the $10 million threshold, the state statutes now allow for additional investment options for the fund’s portfolio manager.

Despite the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic that was present throughout most of the fiscal year, the Village’s tax collections were not adversely impacted during the fiscal year. Property tax collections were at the typical percentages, and both sales tax collections and income tax distributions from the State of Illinois increased.

Since the total grant amount of federal financial assistance programs receipted during this past year was below the $750,000 threshold, the village is not required under the Federal Single Audit Act to have an audit of certain major federal grant programs performed in the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020.

The past four reports have received awards from The Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA).

In other action, the village approved:

• an ordinance establishing a schedule of fees within the village code that will be reviewed and adopted periodically.

• several Homecoming-related items regarding the sale of beer and hard lemonade by the Glen Carbon Volunteer Fire Department, the Bubble Bus, a contract for musical entertainment Johnny Rockitt Band, fireworks and portable toilet facilities from Republic Services.

• purchasing a new police command vehicle from Morrow Brothers Ford in the amount of $32,920.

• the police station’s annual HVAC maintenance contract with GRP for $3,980.

The next village board meeting will be on Tuesday, August 10 at Village Hall.