City stumped by project fund deficit
BY ALYSSA MEIER
Editor
As the Washburn City Commission plans out its budget for the upcoming year, the city office is delving into records seven years old in an effort to find the cause of a $200,000 deficit.
Washburn’s debt services fund, which tracks city projects, bonds and special assessment payments, should be paying out as much as it takes in each year. For some reason, city auditor Ranie Price said Monday, that isn’t the case.
“It’s not washing its way out the way it should,” Price said.
Price said she is not sure if a project was assessed incorrectly, or if incoming payments were put into the wrong fund, but the fund is projected to be in the red by the end of the year, with another $220,000 deficit expected at the end of 2020.
Price said she is working to track transactions all the way back to 2012 to figure out what happened, but in the meantime, next year’s preliminary budget is due to be completed.
The commission worked through the budget on Monday, weighing options for offsetting the deficit while the cause is identified. The city’s 2019 budget allocated $164,390 to offset the debt services deficit. For 2020, the commission plans to follow suit.
