Commerce ends fiscal year in black - thanks to SPLOST

Thanks to the fact that the city used very little of its special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) money during the just-completed fiscal year, Commerce ended the year $686,000 in the black.

Things weren’t so good on the operations side.

“All of the departments operated well within their budgets that were approved last year,” noted Steve McKown, the city’s finance director, at Monday night’s city council meeting.

Nonetheless, considering just operating funds, the city ended up with a deficit of $203,313, spending $775,000 in reserve funds during the year. By contrast, it took in $785,000 more in SPLOST revenue than it spent. Those funds are restricted for specific uses.

The General Fund ended the year almost $19,000 in the black, but McKown said that was at the expense of a transfer of Gas Fund reserves.
The Water and Sewer Fund ended the year $180,000 in the hole and the Natural Gas Fund was in the red by $97,000. The Electric Fund ended the year with $14,000 of revenue over expenditures.

“Everything went well considering the year we’ve had,” McKown commented.