The General Fund (GF) is used to account for financial resources that are not restricted to specific purposes and the budget refers to the revenues and expenditures associated with those resources.
Hollister’s FY2015-2016 GF forecasted revenues of $19.4 million, which included the proceeds of the Measure E 1 percent sales transaction tax. GF revenues fall into nine categories.
Revenue Category Budget % of Budget
Taxes* $12.25 million 62
Intergovernmental** $2.60 million 13
Charges for services $2.0 million 10
Other $1.2 million 6
Franchise fees $0.6 million 3
Licenses & permit fees $0.5 million 3
Use of assets $0.15 million 1.5
Fines & forfeitures $0.14 million 1.5
Special Assessments $0.0 million 0.0
GF Total Revenue $19.4 million 100
*Includes $4.4 million Measure E one-percent Transaction Tax. **Incudes $1.3 million County Fire Contract.
Intergovernmental transfers also include unrestricted grants or state-shared fees. The largest single Intergovernmental transfer is the $1.3 million fire contract to service San Benito County, the second largest is the $625,000 residual from the RDA.
Use of assets includes rent or interest income. The catch-all category, ‘Other’, includes overhead charges to enterprise funds and usually Measure E funds, but I moved the Measure E funds from “Other” to ‘Taxes’ for clarity; they are a direct tax.
Sales and use taxes including Measure E are the largest single tax category at $7.8 million, making up 40 percent of the GF revenue; $3.4 million in regular sales tax and $4.4 million in Measure E sales taxes.
Total property taxes were forecasted at $3.5 million, 18 percent of the GF revenue. The largest property tax line item was $2.4 million from property tax in-lieu of VLF. VLF stands for Vehicle License Fee; it takes a 9-page document to explain it but 12 years ago the state took some VLF and swapped it for property taxes. This swap does not increase your property taxes; however it does encourage the state to keep the VLF (another tax) high.
Other taxes, such as the Transient Occupancy Tax, bring in a total of only $330,000 and almost half of Charges for Services are forecasted for engineering plan checking which varies with building activity.
That’s it, $19.4 million; next time – how the General Fund is spent.
[Note: The rounded budget figures were taken from the City of Hollister FY2015-2016 budget unless otherwise indicated].