According to its financial report, the City of Geary is moving in the right direction.
The report, delivered by Chase Phillips of RS Meacham, showed the utilities authority with $139,000 in unrestricted cash, while the general fund has some $168,000 in unrestricted cash. Those are funds accessible for use by the departments, not including deposits such as water meters or electrical deposits. With 8% of the fiscal year in the books, the utilities authority had a year to date income of 10% of budget, meaning it had surpassed expectations, while expenses were at 5%, meaning less had been spent than was expected.
However, the natural gas income was at 4%, which Phillips explained was not out of the ordinary in the warmer months, but materials and supplies were at 16% and other expenses including services were at 18%.
The city had received a fuel charge increase from OG&E, but Amy Wood said the charge is passed on to the customers. “We just have to watch it and make sure what we’re billing covers it. It’s all we can do,” she said.
Some of those expenses are paid quarterly and the cost will be spread out over the rest of the quarter as the year progresses. Additionally, one employee who works in two departments should have been expensed to the other department for July as his work was predominantly for that department.
The water department had an income of $35,000, or 8%, but the expenditures showed 18%, reflecting repairs at the reverse osmosis plant.
Expenses at the parks department were seasonally high, at $5,000 as were supplies such as pool chemicals at $3,000.
All in all, Phillips was carefully optimistic, especially when noting the sales tax for the month was more than $128,000 and the use tax – taxes paid on internet purchases – were more than $4,000.
“It was a strong month for cash and a strong month for revenues,” Phillips said. “It’s a good start to fiscal 2024.”
Council member Rocky Coleman agreed. “Those are good numbers,” he said. “Let’s hope they continue to trend.”
In other business, the council agreed it did not have to take action to separate the utilities authority administrative assistant position from that of city clerk. City clerk is an elected position and the assistant is hired. However, for many years the city clerk handled those duties as well and was paid an hourly wage in addition to the salary for the clerk’s job.
The sitting city clerk, Paula Reding is having some health issues and advised the city she couldn’t take care of the utilities administration for the time being.
In the round, it was decided the city should advertise for the administrative position. “If we want to be effective, this is something we need to do,” said Mayor Waylan Upchego.
The city also agreed to purchase 116 South Broadway for expansion of the museum. The cost of the building was $2,000.
“Do we have enough pennies saved up?” wondered Coleman. Wood said the city did and had also applied for a grant that would cover the purchase cost.
Council member Rita Allen had an earful for public works director Tommy Lewis.
She wanted to know if the employees were turning in their daily duty logs as council had requested and asked to see the paperwork. One employee had been logging his daily work on a calendar at the shop, which Allen said had to stop or he would face reprimand. The other employees, she said, had to do a better job of filling in the forms, too.
She went on to point out they were still too frequently visiting the convenience store at the north end of town, often on city time. “Make them get their stuff at the north store before they clock in,” she told Lewis. “They shouldn’t be going in there on the clock. They need to do better on street repair. There are too many misses and they are not packing down the blacktop in the holes,” she added.
Her list of complaints continued that the water treatment plant wasn’t consistently locked and that the whole town did not have to have its water shut off to locate leaks, that there were valves and shut offs to isolate the problem while keeping the water on to areas unaffected by the leaks.
“I know we need employees but we can’t keep letting them slide,” Allen said. “The problem is the employees have no fear of repercussions and they aren’t respecting you.”
When it came time to accept the utilities department report, Allen was the lone no vote, rejecting the report.
Geary City Council is next scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. September 7 in city hall.