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 $55,012,254, an increase of $473,154 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 $25,358,494, while the total fund balance reached $31,284,187. 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 68.14% of total general fund expenditures, while total fund balance represents 84.07% of that same amount.

The fund balance of the County's general fund increased $6,000,752 during the current fiscal year. Key factors in this increase are as follows:

Revenues increased $2,975,073, due to increases in revenue categories, property and other County tax of $833,263, intergovernmental of $780,819, use of money and property of $1,228,618, and miscellaneous of $257,390.

Expenditures increased $5,591,448 primarily due to an increase in public safety and legal services of $937,184, county environment and education of $1,212,627, physical health and social services of $2,074,455, and administration of $942,651.

Other financing sources (uses) increased due to an $8,952,918 increase to transfers in for the current year.

The rural services fund has a total fund balance of $618,097, which is an increase of $132,624 from the prior year. Key factors in this increase are as follows:

Revenues increased $179,876 due to increases in the property and other county tax revenue category of $102,086 along with increases in intergovernmental of $82,491.

Expenditures increased $60,306 due to increased expenses in the county environment and education.

Other financing sources (uses) had an increase in funds transferred out of $105,056.

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