Some tinkering aside, Inyo mid-year budget ‘unexciting’

County’s budget remains balanced with no red flags

When the topic is a mid-year budget review, the words “routine” and “unexciting” are reassuring to the budget makers and budget approvers.

Those two words are how Inyo County CAO Nate Greenberg characterized the 2023-24 county budget at the fiscal year’s halfway point. The budget remains balanced and no big red flags were raised with regard to income or expenses. However, there were some interesting tidbits in the budget adjustments approved by the supervisors at the Feb. 20 meeting.

The county captured additional revenue from some unlikely sources, such as the sale of aviation fuel, collected some substantial state grants, and tidied up some initial budget missteps.

The bottom line: Through a variety of factors, the county was able to stash an additional $45,380 in its General Fund Contingency account.

Revenue sources

The biggest infusion of cash was a $1.475 million state grant that will fund long-planned, improvements to the Diaz Lake campground, south of Lone Pine. The grant from the Clean California Local Grant Program will be used for the second phase of upgrades at Diaz Lake. Called the “Welcoming and Beautification

Project,” the planned work is the second phase of improvements at Diaz Lake, one of the county’s largest and most popular campgrounds.

Fuel sales are flying high at two county airports. The Bishop Airport reported aviation sales jumped $50,503 more than budgeted. The Lone Pine/Death Valley airport also saw an increase in aviation fuel sales of about $35,480, which will net a $5,000 hike in revenue after deducting the cost of the fuel.

The revenue from sales

tax and the Transit Occupancy Tax (TOT, or bed tax) are tracking in the right direction. For the first five months of the fiscal year the county collected about $927,600 in sales tax, which is about 53% of the yearly projected revenue total of $1,750,000.

The bed tax has been a bit trickier to predict and budget. After the first half of the fiscal year, TOT collections stood at $909,000, which is about $150,000 less than last year at this time. The drop was attributed directly to the weather-related road closures and emergency conditions in Death Valley National Park, which supplies about 90% of the county TOT.

County Auditor/Controller Amy Shepherd noted the county dropped the budget estimate for TOT by about $400,000 in anticipation of fewer visitors in Death Valley, Lone Pine and other county lodges/hotels (The City of Bishop has a separate TOT.) The tax collection is “better than expected,” so far this year, but will be tracked closely.

Other budget adjustments

The other, mostly small adjustments provide a glimpse into the complexity of trying to match budget estimates with what actually happens.

The Inyo/Mono Agriculture Commissioner scooped up an additional $33,700 in payments from Mono County, which splits the costs with Inyo, and “actual” revenue from the Unrefunded Gas Tax.

The Inyo County Free Library was awarded an $11,628 state grant for e-books and other e-materials.

The Homeland Security budget was bolstered by $93,000 to reflect the actual allocation from the state.

The District Attorney’s Office received an additional $20,000 from the state to pay for mandated “toxicology” tests.

The Tobacco Tax Grant from the state got a full allocation from previous years, which added $74,700 to the Tobacco Prevention Program budget for this year.

On the other side of state funding surprises, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department Jail Fund encountered a delay in implementing the WellPath state grant. Since it hadn’t received the $37,745 in funding that total was dropped out of income and expenses for the fiscal year.

The sheriff’s department also wasn’t able to take advantage of an $18,000 Bullet Proof Vest grant, so that funding was dropped from the department budget.

In the “oops” section, nearly $100,000 in the Social Services funding had to be moved from one part of the budget to another part due an “inadvertent” error in the initial budgeting process. The county’s cost-share portion of the Senior Programs, $390,000, also landed in the wrong budget unit and was moved into the right one. These paperwork budgetary maneuvers did not impact the services provided by either department or their overall funding allocations.

The sheriff’s department has been looking to replace numerous vehicles, but hasn’t been able to in the recent past because the specific vehicles were not available. So when they did become available, the sheriff’s department was able to tap $342,000 in reserves in the Motor Pool fund to buy them.