City of Mountain Brook in good shape financially, audit shows

A Tuesday night review of the September 30, 2021, city audit demonstrated that Mountain Brook isn’t your average city when it comes to reserve funds.

It’s well above average.

Jason Harpe and Catherine Cannon of the accounting firm of Carr, Riggs & Ingram reported during the City Council meeting that Mountain Brook’s fund balance — the days it could operate if it had to rely solely on its reserves — is 191 days.

“You want to have at least, as a rule of thumb, 90 days of operating expenditures in your fund balance,” Harpe said. “In other words, if you shut down everything and you just operated out of your general fund, would you have 90 days to operate without bringing any more revenue in, paying everything you need to.”

Mountain Brook’s fund balance actually increased by four days from a year ago. City Manager Sam Gaston said the city has been very intentional in building its reserves.

“This has been a goal of ours for many years,” he said. “Thanks to a conservative city council and conservative department heads and of course (finance director) Steve (Boone's) financial prowess, we've been able to get up to six months. That was our goal, to get to six months.

“I was surprised when he said the average was around 95 to 100 days,” Gaston continued. “I know most cities don't have that amount of money in reserve. We're very blessed to have that. It gives us some comfort that our city's well maintained and well financed in case something happens — a disaster. We have these funds in reserve.”

The city managers compared the fund balance to a household’s savings or escrow account.

“It's basically a safety net for us,” he said. “We have a capital project fund where we are financing capital projects. We have gasoline funds, etc. We have various funds that are for particular reasons and the general fund is basically our safety net.”

Gaston called Boone the best finance director in the state, “if not the Southeast. He does yeoman's work and of course we also have very good auditors. We're very blessed to have Steve. He helps keep our city finances in very good shape.”

In council action:

Daniel Odrezin was appointed to fill an opening on the Mountain Brook Board of Education.

The council passed on its first reading an ordinance authorizing the issuance, execution, sale and delivery of $6 million in general obligation warrants. The warrants are being sold to fund capital improvements, including a fire station.

During the pre-council meeting, the panel discussed possible solutions for a fill-in project for Field No. 1 at the athletic complex.

Police Chief James “Jaye” A. Loggins told the panel about uncontrolled intersections in the city. Loggins said he was surprised there were as many (30) such intersections. He added that he would suggest the council refer to a traffic engineering consultant to determine which intersections should be made priorities for traffic control.