Village Gets High Marks for FY 2011 Report

According to auditor Fred Lantz of the firm Sikich LLP, fewer than one percent of municipalities under 25,000 people in the country prepare a yearly financial report, and receive a clean and unqualified opinion on it from a professional.

Once again, the is in that rarified company. At Wednesday’s Finance Committee meeting, Lantz gave a brief overview of the village’s Fiscal Year 2011 financial report, and gave it high marks.

Between May 1, 2010 and April 30, 2011, the village took in about $24 million in revenues, and spent about $16.5 million providing services to residents. According to Finance Director Jeff Zoephel, the revenues were six percent more than budgeted, and expenses 3.8 percent less.

The village ended the year with about $2.1 million of spendable money left in the general fund—just shy of their targeted 25 percent fund balance goal, but closer than they had come in previous years, Lantz said.

“You did have a better story to tell this year than last fiscal year,” Lantz said.

The village added roughly $7.4 million to its assets, and Lantz commended staff for “toeing the line on the cost side to beef up net assets.”

The village does still have $15 million in outstanding bonds to pay, primarily for the construction of the new police station and Village Hall. And Lantz did key in on one area in which the village, like many municipalities in the state, is struggling: its police pension fund.

While Montgomery is keeping up with payments to the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, it has not made full payments on police pensions. The village paid more each year than the last, but still has seen the annual pension cost rise. The village paid 93 percent of that cost in 2009, but slipped to 71 percent in 2010, and 59 percent in 2011.

But the annual police pension costs continue to rise, up from $239,167 in 2009 to $411,141 in 2011. Lantz recommended the village hire its own actuary (instead of using the Police Department's, which it had been), to determine just how to deal with those costs.

Wednesday’s was the final Finance Committee meeting for at least three months, as the Village Board will try out a new system starting in September. The Committee of the Whole will now meet twice a month (starting Sept. 14), and the other standing committees will be dissolved.

Some trustees suggested keeping the Finance Committee going on Wednesday, but the consensus was still with the new system.

"We'll see how it goes," said Trustee Bill Keck.