The Industrial Development Board’s donation request of $250,000 for fiscal year 2015-16 to the county remains intact – for now.
Members of the county’s Budget and Finance Committee have reviewed the IDB’s request for funding. Discussion was tabled last month in order to ask IDB director Don Alexander to attend a meeting and answer a few questions about his request.
In attendance at the meeting were Commissioners Terry Bell, Carl E. Bouldin, Ken Martin and Michael Martin. County Executive Herschel Wells asked how much it takes financially to run the IDB office.
Said IDB accountant Gerlinde Rogers, “We looked at it and basically, we are looking at around $200,000 just for administration and any kind of … I guess I need a better way to break that down for you.”
Wells added, “I’m just talking about your expenses.”
“Just our office salaries, just administrative-type general expense is somewhere around or a little over $200,000.”
“That’s awful high,” said Wells.
Salaries are listed as $107,500 and insurance and benefits $12,000, which is more than half of the $200,000 to run the office.
“If you take the salaries off, it’s not very much after that,” said Rogers. “It’s not giving us any money to do any kind of … how are we going to attract any businesses to the county if we don’t have any money to do that?”
Wells says he’s heard complaints from existing industries that they can’t find enough people to fill the jobs they currently have available and they want the county to slow down on job creation.
“Right now, we don’t need to be attracting,” he said. “We’ve got more businesses than we have people to work. What they are telling me and board members is we need to put the brakes on a little bit.”
During the first meeting, committee members questioned why the organization would be getting $120,000 in revenue listed under “interest income” on the budget that was submitted with the request, why it was supposed to be self-sufficient after receiving $2.4 million to construct a spec building and it was not, and if the organization had any cash on hand because the ending balance would be $1,351 for fiscal year 2015-16.
Bell questioned the interest income, as members had thought the money was coming from interest off money held in an account.
Not so, says Rogers.
“That comes off our leases,” said Rogers. “On our leases in notes receivable, we have three that are straight leases. Everything else is what we consider notes receivable or a capital lease. On the capital leases, it does have some interest that we have to account for. According to our CPAs and our governmental accounting, I have to list the interest income from those capital leases separately from notes receivable.”
Bell stated, “So, it’s not interest from money you’ve got in the bank?”
“I wish,” said Rogers.
Alexander pointed members to “total interest and administrative expense” that had $150,000 listed, which he says means the organization is paying out more than the $120,000 in interest income.
“We’ve got more going out than coming in,” said Alexander.
Bell questioned how much the organization has in cash.
“We’ve got $400,000 and something in cash right now,” said Rogers.