For months, Patrick County’s Treasurer Sandra Stone has asked the Patrick County Board of Supervisors to create a plan to deal with the county’s money woes.
“We have hit rock bottom and it’s your call what to do,” Stone said at a Sept. 10 meeting. She also explained the contingency fund that has been tapped to fill in spending gaps was nearly depleted.
A majority of the board then agreed to pursue a Revenue Anticipation Loan that will be repaid by June 30, 2019. The loan is based on and will be repaid with anticipated revenue, Stone said.
The county has received five bids on the proposed $3.5 million loan, with plans to hold a public hearing on the proposal in Oct. 15.
The county has received five bids from potential banks, with interest that ranges from 2.19 percent to 4.35 percent.
Davenport & Company LLC put the project out for bids.
County Administrator Tom Rose said the company also is “taking a pulse to see what we need to do and they’re putting together some kind of plan going forward.”
Meanwhile, Stone said she has crossed her fingers that enough tax revenue will be received to meet the county’s obligations.
“We are not where we want to be, but we have met our bills and we have met our payroll,” she said at the end of September.
“I’m not going to say that I’m not concerned about” meeting those obligations in October, Stone said. “My big concern is October. October is looking a little bleak. I don’t want people to panic, but the bottom I’ve been talking about is finally here.”
Stone explained that although she has an idea of any given month’s payroll, that number can change. The total amount of bills also may fluctuate, so she doesn’t always know the true totals until two to three days before obligations are due to be paid.
While that may not pose a problem in some localities, Stone said it is an issue “when you’re watching every penny.”
To help the county meet the September payroll, the Patrick County School Board pulled two electric bills from their bills packet and deferred those payments.
“I thought we could have done it” without pulling the two bills, Stone said. But school officials “did that to help out. It was us all working together. We were trying to make sure” there was enough funding in the county’s coffers to make payroll, she said, adding that making payroll is a priority.
Stone said revenues are coming into her office, and “we’re off to a good start, but we’ve still got a ways to go. We’re going to have to have enough revenue come in” to meet the county’s October expenses “because we have nowhere else to draw it from,” she said. “We’re all trying to work through this and do this together; I’m going to trust we get to where we need to be.”
