SWAG agenda 091616 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

47 Orange County, NC Financial Plan and Rate Study for Solid Waste Enterprise Fund not be funded at the current rate of $107.00, nor the increased Fee amount under Scenarios 2A, 213, or 3A. • In the event that the Program Fee was eliminated in its entirety, in the spirit of a true enterprise fund, with no General Fund Contribution or Appropriated Fund Balance, based on Scenario 7, the impact on the tax rate would be a required increase of up to $0.07 per $100 of assessed value per year. • The Pro Forma Rate Model developed as part of this cost of service study should be updated annually and used for long -term financial forecasting of the Fund and to evaluate the likely impact of proposed Department operational changes. • Based on a cursory review of the program, SCS did not identify any notable inefficiencies within the Department operations. SCS recommends the County conduct a more in -depth review of its program on a routine basis to identify opportunities for revenue increase and expense reduction. 5.1 REVENUE INCREASE STRATEGIES Because such a large component of the County's System is correlated with urban and rural curbside recyclable material collection or drop -off, Orange County has historically relied heavily on receiving substantial revenue from the sale of recyclable material to secondary markets. As explained above, SCS recommends the Department set up an R &E fund to weather the fluctuations in the recyclable commodities market and level any market pricing fluctuations over extended timeframes. Other revenue increase strategies identified include: • Evaluate potential for developing a regional transfer station. A transfer station could provide revenue from outside sources in the form of tipping fees and offset the current expense incurred from tipping County solid waste at the City of Durham Transfer Station. • Selling the Greene Tract of County -owned land, which currently does not increase the quality of the Department Program, will generate significant one -time revenue. The County should assess the market value of the property prior to any ownership transfer in part or in full. • The County currently budgets approximately $15,000 per year in interest revenue from the Enterprise Fund balance. The estimated fund balance as of June 30, 2016 is projected to be approximately $8.9 Million. This translates to an approximate annual interest rate of 0.17 percent. SCS believes the County could benefit in the future from an increase in interest revenue from its current investments. Any accrued interest from unused loan monies could also be allocated to the Department to offset General Fund revenue. • Additional strategies such as increasing the collection of the Program Fee assessment, charging commercial entities for organics collection services, allocating funds from the General Fund to help cover the costs of storm event cleanup, and making efforts 3 4