I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year! I want to give an update on the Village. May 2021 myself, the Clerk, Treasure and Board took a look at our finances. Our bank accounts totaled about $100,000. About $50,000 was Motor Fuel funds that can only be used on the road repairs. We spent about $24,000 on road repairs in 2021. We had half of 2018’s audit to complete with a cost of $5,000. We also have 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 audits still to complete at $10,000 each.
With IRS penalties coming in each month the next one larger than the last we had to make drastic cuts. We changed internet providers, corrected the number of trash customers, suspended the police department and raised water utility rates. With some other changes we were able to save about $50,000 our first year.
We sold surplus properties for a total of about $24,000 and saved $200-300 a month on those electric bills. Those properties are now paying taxes and utilities earning income for the Village.
As of today we paid about $48,000 to the IRS for failure to file and failure to pay payroll tax withholding before May 2021. From May 2021 the required quarterly payments have been made. We hired an accountant to clean up and organize our QuickBooks so an auditor can make sense of our records. This has cost $15,000 so far and soon they will be finished fixing 2019-2021. Once complete we can send to our auditor and start paying on that $40,000 audit bill.
We received two installments of ARPA funds totaling about $59,000 to be used for our water and sewer infrastructure. We spent $20,000 on one main sewer pump and are having others being rebuilt. Please don’t flush wipes down the toilet they get tangled up on the motors and cause them to burn up. It cost about $2,000-$3,000 to have a pump rebuilt.
We spent about $45,000 of Motor Fuel funds on road repairs in 2022.
As of December our current bank balance total is about $213,000. These funds will help pay for our required audits, much needed infrastructure repairs and the portion that is Motor Fuel funds for road repairs.
As we take care of our finances and become compliant with our audits we can start applying for grants. It will take time but if we all work together as a community, we can make our Village a better place to live.
“FOCUSED ON OUR FUTURE!” Aaron L. Eubanks, Mayor
Village of Buckner 