Budgets – The Truth

EDGAR CO. (ECWd) –

With the upcoming election cycle, it’s becoming evident that smear campaigns are ramping up and they are filled with lies and deception from people that won’t submit a FOIA request, or know that if they did their lies wouldn’t hold any water.

To paint the real picture of why this county is in the mess that it’s in, we used county audit documents received from the County Clerk to show what is really going on with our tax dollars since 2005.

A key item to understand is that the audit numbers ending in November of 2011 represent the budgets put in place by those holding elected office in November of 2010.  The only two offices that had a change affecting that would be the County Clerk’s office and the Sheriff’s office.

One other key factor for that budget cycle is the fact the county was in such bad shape as a whole, thanks to worthless leadership of Jim Keller, they forced a 10% budget cut across the board on everyone’s budget.

It’s clear, looking at the trend in the spreadsheet, things are improving and some offices, contrary to the lies circulated on such reputable sites as Topix, should be commended for their efforts of not only staying within their budgets but in some cases well under their budget.

A special shout out goes to the Office of Supervisor of Assessments as they are the only office in the Edgar County system that has been under budget since 2005, which is all the records I had easy access to without filing those pesky FOIA requests.

A special shout out in the form of, you should be ashamed, goes out to Chris Patrick and Jimmy Wells as it proves again, they can’t manage the Airport! Patrick was in charge according Jimmy Wells and the numbers reflect over budget spending approximately 60% of the time since 2005  and a whopping 29% over budget in 2013.  Pretty sad when you only have a budget of approximately $72K and you go over it by $21K.

Now for that pesky Sheriff Budget that so many clueless people talk about.  The facts don’t lie but liars do!  Tim Crippes was $157,352.00 OVER budget his last year in office and a total overage of $195,064.00 for his last two years in office.

Keeping in mind a 10% across the board budget cut by the board for the current Sheriff’s first year in office, faced with a budget established by the outgoing Sheriff, he was $55,004.00 over budget.  What would he have been without the budget cut of 10% by the board?  He would have been $52,487 UNDER budget his first year.

What I found most interesting with the last years’ “UNDER” budget numbers for the Sheriff, which totaled $50,429.00 was the fact that didn’t account for the $23K that had to be paid out to a deputy from that budget because of failures of the past Sheriff, Tim Crippes.  So basically the Sheriff was $73,429.00 UNDER budget.  Had there not been a mandated budget cut county wide, he would have been under budget every year in office, contrary to what certain people are claiming in this county.

For those who wonder what was the worst set of numbers that put us in the financial pickle we are in, it’s clear, next to Tim Crippes, the leadership of Jim Keller accounted for a $497,720.00 over budget expense to the taxpayers from 2008-2010

This is the Spreadsheet established from all the county audits from 2005-2012 and 2013 was established by the County Treasures final numbers.

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