As noted earlier, the County used 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 spendable resources. Such information is useful in assessing the County's financing requirements. In particular, fund balance may serve as a useful measure of a County's net resources available for spending at the end of the fiscal year.

As of the end of the current fiscal year, the County's governmental funds reported combined ending fund balances of $54,539,100, a decrease of $2,852,243 in comparison with the prior year.

The general fund is the chief operating fund of the County. At the end of the current fiscal year, unassigned fund balance of the general fund was $17,804,097, while the total fund balance reached $25,283,435. 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. Unassigned fund balance represents 56.30% of total general fund expenditures, while total fund balance represents 79.95% of that same amount.

The fund balance of the County's general fund decreased $335,792 during the current fiscal year. Key factors in this decrease are as follows:

Revenues decreased $2,312,641, due to increases in revenue categories, property and other County tax of $678,409 along with decreases in intergovernmental of $1,896,587, use or money and property of $660,042 and miscellaneous of $217,488.

Expenses increased $1,288,025 primarily due to an increase in public safety and legal services of $1,723,249 and county environment and education of $888,647, along with a decrease of physical health and social services of $413,535 and administration of $245,089.

Other financing sources (uses) decreased due to a $426,582 decrease to transfers for the current year.

The rural services fund has a total fund balance of $485,473, which is an increase of $118,110 from the prior year. Key factors in this increase are as follows:

Revenues increased $133,110 due to increases in the property and other county tax revenue category.

Expenses decreased $42,386 due to decreased expenses in the county environment and education.

Other Financing Sources had an increase in funds transferred out of $106,704.