Sarasota County Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2020

• Expenses for business-type activities increased by $9.7 million, or 4.7 percent. Key factors that contributed to the increase in expenses are identified below. o The Utility System (water and wastewater utilities) expenses increased by $12.2 million, or 11.2 percent due to increases in operations and maintenance costs related to increased construction in the County and related growth and maintenance of the System. o The Transportation Authority expenses decreased $4.5 million, or 14.7 percent due to modification of operations in part due to the global health crisis - COVID-19 and decreases in depreciation expense. Financial Analysis of the Government’s Funds As noted earlier, Sarasota County uses fund accounting to ensure and demonstrate compliance with finance- related legal requirements. Governmental Funds. The focus of Sarasota County’s governmental funds is to provide information on near- term inflows, outflows and balances of spendable resources . Such information is useful in assessing Sarasota County’s financing requirements. In particular, unassigned fund balance may serve as a useful measure of a government’s net resources available for spending at the end of the fiscal year. At the end of the current fiscal year, Sarasota County’s governmental funds reported combined ending fund balances of $596.5 million, an increase of $84.1 million compared to the prior year. Approximately 4.7 percent of this total amount, or $28.1 million, constitutes unassigned fund balance, which is available for spending at the County’s discretion. Further information regarding unassigned fund balance can be found in the governmental funds financial statements starting on page 48. The remainder of fund balance is restricted, committed, assigned or non-spendable. These amounts totaled $568.4 million or 95.3 percent of ending fund balance. Of this amount, $460.4 million is restricted by law or externally imposed requirements, $82.4 million is committed for specific purposes by the Board of County Commissioners and $23.3 million is assigned for various purposes by the County Administrator. The general fund is the chief operating fund of Sarasota County. The general fund represents 46.1 percent of the total governmental revenues. At the end of the current fiscal year, unassigned fund balance of the general fund was $35.0 million, while the total fund balance was $111.4 million. 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 13.6 percent of the total annual general fund expenditures, and total fund balance represents 43.4 percent. The fund balance of Sarasota County’s general fund increased by $12.7 million during the current fiscal year. Key factors in the change in fund balance are as follows: • Taxes collected exceeded the budget by $2.2 million as a result in increases of assessed property values from the prior fiscal year. • Appropriations of $12.2 million for various general government activities were not expended. Additional information regarding the general fund budget to actual variances can be found on pages 56-57. The Emergency Services Special Revenue Fund has a total fund balance of $23.4 million, a decrease of $4.2 million over the prior fiscal year. This fund balance must be used for fire and ambulance emergency services. The ad valorem taxes collected through the EMS municipal services taxing unit increased by 5.8 percent which is consistent with a moderate increase in assessed property values. Expenditures increased $1.3 million over the prior fiscal year to $94.9 million primarily due to increases in personnel services. 37