Fund Overview
Boulder County Fund Overview
Annual Budget 2023
BOULDER COUNTY FUND OVERVIEW
A fund is a grouping of related accounts that is used to maintain control over resources that have been segregated for legal purposes, specific activities, or particular objectives. The county, like other state and local governments, uses fund accounting and fund budgeting to ensure and demonstrate compliance with finance related legal requirements.
The funds can be divided into three major categories:
• Governmental Funds
• Proprietary Funds
• Component Units
Of these three, only the first two are appropriated in the Boulder County budget.
Within the Governmental Fund group, funds are split into three categories:
• General Use Funds
• Special Revenue Funds
• Capital Projects / Debt Service Funds
Within the Proprietary Fund group, funds are further divided into two categories:
• Internal Service Funds
• Enterprise Funds
The county’s Component Units—Public Health and the Housing Authority—report to another board structure, through which their budgets are adopted separately as different entities.
The Board of County Commissioners serves as the Board for both the Nederland EcoPass PID and the Burgundy Park PID; information on the 2023 adopted budgets for these entities can be found on the References page.
All fund budgets listed in this document are appropriated. The fund structure shown in this document is the same shown in the county’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, except for Component Units and Public Improvement Districts (PID) which are budgeted by separate entities and are not a part of the adopted Boulder County budget.
The matrix below assigns each of the Boulder County funds to a specific fund group and further underlines the organizational connections to the funds across Boulder County. Narrative and associated budgetary fiscal information are presented for each fund on the Funds page.
Fund Types by Department
CONSOLIDATED BUDGET SUMMARY
In order to provide a comprehensive view of county-wide financial resources for the 2023 Budget Book, we look at a three-year period when presenting a summary of revenues, expenditures and fund balances. The 2023 adopted budget is the primary focus of this book, and much of the material in the document relates specifically to the 2023 adopted budget, but the 2022 estimated activity and the 2021 actuals are a basis for determining beginning fund balance resources.
A consolidated view of the Boulder County budget includes the combined total expenditures, revenues and fund balances for all 21 of the county’s funds.
FUND BALANCES
Fund Balance in governmental funds, and net position in proprietary funds, increase when revenues exceed expenditures, and decrease when revenues are less than expenditures. This section will use fund balance as a term to describe the resources available for budgeting in both governmental and proprietary funds.
Budgeting for an adequate fund balance allows us to compensate for revenue volatility which helps to maintain fiscal stability. Even if a revenue were 100% predictable, it is still fiscally prudent to retain some of those revenues as ending fund balance, since this may be the only resource if unanticipated, or mandated factors result in the need for a supplemental increase to the expenditure budget.
The use of, or consumption of fund balances can become an important revenue source in the current budget year. Revenues that are in excess of the current year budget, and expenditures that fall below budget, are analyzed to determine if the resulting fund balance excess is capable of sustaining expenditures over the coming years, or whether a one-time expenditure could be made without creating future year obligations.
Additional Fund Balance Policies are found on the Policies & Procedures page.
The following table shows the fund balance use or contribution for each fund. A more detailed explanation follows regarding the reasons for material changes in fund balance budgeted for the 2023 budget year.
2023 Use of Fund Balance
FUND BALANCE USE
The 2023 total net use of fund balance for all funds is $48,985,440.
The most significant use of fund balance for 2023 comes from these three funds:
• $20.5 million in the Dedicated Resources Fund
• $9.9 million in the Road & Bridge Fund
• $8.8 million in the Social Services Fund
The use of fund balance in the General, Road and Bridge, Worthy Cause, Parks and Open Space, Capital Expenditure and Disaster Recovery funds is attributable to one-time capital costs or debt service payments which are funded by revenues or debt service proceeds received in a prior year.
The significant use of fund balance in the Social Services Fund is the result of increasing personnel costs in this fund and the county’s approach to budgeting the intergovernmental revenues that support these costs. A “closeout” process is done by all Colorado counties in conjunction with the Colorado State Department of Human Services, where unspent block grant revenues for the prior year are distributed to counties with higher expenditures. Increased demand state‐wide has put these “unanticipated resources” at risk. The county takes a conservative approach to budgeting grant revenue due to its uncertainty and conversely budgets the use of fund balance at a significant level to account for the potential shortfall in revenues needed to cover programs that continue to be in very high demand in the county.
As part of ARPA, the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) was established to address certain impacts from the pandemic and Boulder County was allocated $63 million in 2021. Boulder County’s distribution of these funds was informed by a community engagement and planning process. Many of the qualifiable expenses are included in the 2023 expenditure budget and draw from prior year fund balances.
Use of “fund balance” in the internal services and enterprise funds reflects the budgeted change in current net assets and all enterprise and internal service funds show positive net position in the prior fiscal year. The significant change in fund balance in the Recycling Center Fund is attributable to one-time capital costs which are funded by revenues or debt service proceeds received in a prior year.
The most significant contribution to fund balances have been budgeted in the Health and Human Services Fund, Offender Management, Clean Energy Options LID Fund and Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds Fund where surpluses of restricted revenues are projected. Increases in dedicated property tax and sales and use tax in the Health and Human Services Fund and the Offender Management Tax fund will be used in future years for qualifiable expenses. Similarly, surpluses of revenue in the Clean Energy Options LID and Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds funds will be used for future year debt service or to call bonds where allowed.
EXPENDITURES BY GOVERNMENT FUNCTION
Individual fund tables showing expenditures are important as they relate to the requirement to balance the budget and ensure that each fund is fiscally sustainable. Since the adopting resolutions include information at a fund level, and the actual financial transactions operate within funds, this detail becomes useful.
An alternative approach is to look at the entire county budget by function. The 2023 budget is organized into nine functional categories. This is done to make Boulder County budget data comparable to data from other governmental entities. A description of each function is provided below.
GENERAL GOVERNMENT – $134,812,342
Includes all expenditures for the administrative branch and covers a range of core functions of county government. Services are provided by the Board of County Commissioners, Office of the County Administrator, Assessor, Treasurer, County Attorney, Clerk & Recorder, Community Planning & Permitting, and Surveyor.
HEALTH & WELFARE – $130,612,184
Includes all expenditures for the conservation and improvement of public health, to provide public assistance and institutional care for individuals economically unable to provide essential needs for themselves, and to eliminate or ameliorate poverty and its causes. Services are provided by the departments of Public Health, Community Services, and Housing & Human Services.
PUBLIC SAFETY & JUDICIAL – $107,467,223
Includes all expenditures for the agencies whose purpose is to provide for the protection of persons and property. Services in this category are provided by the Sheriff, District Attorney, and Coroner.
CONSERVATION & SUSTAINABILITY - $91,305,333
Includes all expenditures to conserve and manage natural resources such as land, water, soil, historical assets, and energy as well as broader sustainability programs to improve environmental health, combat climate change and build resilience. Services are provided by the Office of Sustainability, Climate Action & Resilience, the Public Works Resource Conservation Division, and the Parks & Open Space Department.
TRANSPORTATION - $64,859,665
Includes all expenditures for the construction and maintenance of roadways, walkways, transit, bikeways, bridges, and storm drainage. Includes intergovernmental expenditures for payments to cities for road improvements. Services are provided by the Public Works Department.
DEBT SERVICE – $24,151,578
Includes all expenditures for interest and principal payments on general long-term debt and fiscal agent fees connected thereto. Payments in this category are provided for across several county funds.
DISASTER RECOVERY – $2,084,989
The disaster recovery expenditures represent the work done to recover from the 2013 flood and more recently the Marshall Fire. Services are provided by a range of organizations including the Board of County Commissioners, Public Works Department and Parks & Open Space Department.
CAPITAL EXPENDITURES – $11,908,180
Includes all expenditures for the construction and maintenance of public buildings, including new building projects and renovations. This category also includes capital investments in technology, equipment and information systems that support county-wide operations.
PUBLIC HEALTH – $26,264,601
Includes expenditures for multi-departmental pandemic response as well as annual transfers to the Public Health Department
LONG-RANGE PLANNING
The county uses long-range planning analyses to help predict the long-term effect of budgetary decisions. We have included an example of one of our financial forecasting models in this document. This example shows the effect that inflows of revenues and outflows of expenditures have on the fund balance for the funds where the primary revenue source is sales and use tax. The time horizon for this multi-year funding analysis is five years and it presents a consolidated view of the following funds and appropriations: the Trails Sales and Use Tax appropriation in the Dedicated Resources Fund, the Worthy Cause Tax Fund, the Offender Management Fund, the Parks and Open Space Fund, the Sustainability Sales Tax Fund, the Wildfire Mitigation and Emergency Services Funds
.
The revenue source is primarily sales and use tax, which is a very volatile resource. County sales and use taxes in 2021 and 2022 remained strong despite concerns about economic indicators and the uncertainty of how the global pandemic would impact this revenue stream.
For 2023, we chose to budget a 6% increase over the 2022 estimated sales and use tax revenues. A conservative 3% accelerator has been used for 2024 through 2027.
The model also accounts for the following:
- 0.100% Transportation and Trails sales and use tax, set to expire in June of 2024, was extended in perpetuity effective July 1, 2024;
- 0.185% Alternative Sentencing & Jail Enhancements sales and use tax in December of 2024;
- 0.100% Open Space Capital Improvements 2005 sales and use tax will decrease to 0.050% in 2025;
- 0.100% Wildfire Mitigation sales and use tax went into effect January 1, 2023;
- 0.100% Emergency Services sales and use tax went into effect January 1, 2023.
Additional information about the county’s sales and use tax rates and expiration dates can be found on the county’s Sales & Use Tax website.
In addition to projected tax revenue, relatively minor amounts for other revenues–such as interest on investments and lottery proceeds revenue–are assumed to be constant throughout the model. We believe that this is a conservative approach which will result in an adequate projection for multi-year planning for the programs supported by these dedicated resources.
The 2023 expenditure budget for the funds listed above is comprised of the approved budget requests for personnel, debt service, open space acquisitions, capital projects, non-profit funding awards, and operations and maintenance. The following assumptions are made for future year expenditures:
- Personnel costs are inflated by 10% in future years to account for increases in compensation and benefits costs;
- Worthy Cause awards to non-profits are inflated annually at the same rate as projected revenues;
- All other operating expenditures remain flat throughout the model.
