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Orange County, North Carolina Business-Type Activities. Business-type activities increased the County's net assets by only $284,874. This increase came from increases in operating income in each of the three business activities combined with increases in operating transfers. Financial Analysis of the County's Funds As noted earlier, the County uses fund accounting to ensure and demonstrate compliance with finance- related legal requirements. Governmental Funds. The focus of the County's governmental funds is to provide information on near- term inflows, outflows, and balances of usable resources. Such information is useful in assessing the County's financing requirements. Specifically, available fund balance can be a useful measure of a government's net resources available for spending at the end of the fiscal year. The General Fund is the chief operating fund of the County. At the end of the current fiscal year, unassigned balance of the General Fund was $35.1 million, while total fund balance equaled $47.9 million. As a measure of the General Fund's liquidity, it may be useful to compare both unassigned fund balance and total fund balance to total fund expenditures and transfers. Unassigned fund balance represents 20 percent of total General Fund expenditures and transfers, while the total fund balance represents 27.3 percent of General Fund expenditures and transfers. The increase in fund balance resulted from revenues exceeding expenditures and transfers by $10.6million. General Fund revenue at $184.5 million was higher than the final amended budget. Property tax revenue makes up 74% of General Fund budgeted revenue. The General Fund revenue was $4.2 million more than budget. Property tax increased by $1.8 million from last year, or 1.4% from last year, primarily due to a 1.1% increase in the property tax base, increased collections of property taxes on registered motor vehicles and discoveries, which caused property tax revenues to exceed the budget by $3.4 million. Intergovernmental revenue, the second largest revenue source for the General Fund, decreased marginally largely reflecting decreases in Federal and State grant revenue related to the continued budgetary issues at the Federal and State levels due to the slow recovery of the economy.Sales tax revenue, which is the third largest revenue source, increased by $2.3 million from last year to $17.5 million. This increase was due largely from receiving more sales tax revenues as the economy recovers from the economic recession. Charges for services, licenses and permits, investment income, and miscellaneous revenues all came in either slightly higher or lower than budget.The total amount relative to budget was $87,110 lower than the amended budget for the year. General Fund expenditures decreased $8.8 million from last year to $175.5 million.Expenditures, without financing uses, were $8.6 million, or 5.0% under budget, which is higher than last year which was 3.0% below budget. This can be attributed, in part, to managemen continued directive to departments to reduce non-essential expenditures, an extended freeze on capital expenditures, and continued delay in filling of vacant positions. This step assisted in the increase of unassigned fund balance of the General Fund.Total expenditures with other financing uses decreased by 6% from the previous fiscal year, which is less than the increase in the final budget from the prior year of 4.3%. 10