Date: March 7, 2006
To: RCPL Board of Trustees
From: Greta Chapman
Re: March Budget Narrative
Date: March 7, 2006
To: Greta Chapman
From: Heidi Archie
Re: March Budget Narrative
In reviewing this month’s budget reports, it is noteworthy to provide additional explanation for a few line items on each report. The Library typically estimates spending approximately 12% of the city and county budgets monthly. Since our budget reports are reflecting February’s information, we should have expended about 24% of each of the budgets. We have currently expended 18.76% of the City budget and 19.01% of the County budget. So even though we are overspent in a couple of line items, we are under spent overall.
City Budget Review.
- Line item 4110 - Salaries and Benefits – Cost of living increases are distributed in January and again in June. Therefore, during the first six months of the year, this percentage will be lower than the last six months of the year. We have also had a vacancy in the Business Office and Facilities Department which probably had a minimal decrease in the percentage of the amount expended in this line item.
- Line item 4111 - Overtime Wages – The Facilities Department has had some inconsistencies in temporary staffing during the medical leave of a staff member. Additionally, Facilities has been in the hiring process for their additional part-time person. Therefore, the supervisor has had an increase in hours to cover the needs of the facility. The Business Office has also had some inconsistencies in temporary staffing during the Accounting Clerk I vacancy. Additionally, many of the duties of the Accounting Clerk I cannot be completed by a temporary employee; such as, counting money and creating a deposit. This has caused an increase in hours for the Administrative Assistant as well. Both vacancies are anticipated being filled by the end of March, which will decrease overtime hours.
- Line item 4140 - Workers Compensation – This is charged once annually and is a cost savings to us for this year.
- Line
item 4211 - General & Auto Liability – This was budgeted at $6,832
while actual expenses are $12,437.
This amount is based on premium information received for the
current year for the entire City of
- Line item 4252 - Repair Structures – Typically this line item amount is slated at approximately $20,000 per year. This year it was budgeted at $59,900 to include the $39,900 encumbrance from 2005 for carpet replacement. We have been invoiced for the majority of the carpet replacement and the remainder will be invoiced once carpet is laid under the current stacks pending the Space Use recommendation.
- Line item 4262 - Gas, Oil, Fuel – In 2005, there was an oversight in payment of the gas bills from June – December. This mistake was caught and corrected in February and therefore we have essentially overspent this line item.
- Line item 4263 - Clothing, Food – We did not include a separate amount in our projections for this line item originally but had planned for $500 in spending of uniforms and safety boots as required for our union members. These funds were included in the line item 4294 – Other Miscellaneous Expenses, but upon review from City Finance were deemed to be taken out of line item 4263.
- Line item 4341 - General Materials – In 2005, Library staff developed a more efficient way to track the materials that are purchased through the database used throughout the library. This keeps very accurate amounts of what is spent in each department: Reference, Youth Services, etc. for materials. However, since we order items for all departments from the same vendors, many items are invoiced together. This means that if the Library has ordered 50 books, each book is a line item on an invoice. Rather than tracking that line by line through our accounting system, it was more efficient to process the entire invoice as a total amount charged to one line item: 4341. Once we have expended that amount in full, we will begin using line item 4342, and so on. If we require detail about how much has been spent per department for materials, that information is available in the database system and would only be a duplication of effort to also be in our accounting system.
- The actual budget will not be loaded into the City Finance system until April when a supplemental appropriation will be completed. Therefore, the budget column will continue to read zero until that time.
- Line item 4296 - Office Equipment/Furniture – This line item is currently budgeted at $5,000 this year and we have expended $7,856.33. This amount was moved from our 2005 budget to 2006 due to a miscalculation in our close-out of 2005. We will not be incurring any additional expenses in this line item during 2006 due to this discrepancy.
Library Board Funds Review
- Again,
the actual budget will not be loaded into the City Finance system until
April when a supplemental appropriation will be completed.
- Line
item 4530 – Refund or Reimbursement - The amount showing in the Budget
column, $10,256.66, is the amount of money we deposited in January into
our Board Funds account. February’s
data will not be reconciled by City Finance until after March 10,
2006.
