Do You Know How Much Money You Have?
I do and I’ll bet you do. I just read the most recent local government accounting article about Clayton County. Clayton is just south of the City of Atlanta. (We do things a bit odd here in Georgia. The airport is in Clayton County; but, it is owned by the City of Atlanta, which is in both Fulton and DeKalb Counties. But that’s another post.)
Clayton is also Georgia’s “short bus” county joined at times by Fulton County and the City of Atlanta. They all just seem to be a bit short when it comes to common sense.
Here in Georgia our governments seem to lose money regularly. Georgia DOT isn’t sure how much money it has, what it has committed or what it realistically can expect to come in in the near future. Atlanta is still searching for money it is sure that it has, or maybe not. Fulton is pissed because there are now three or four cities that have been created because the people in them got pissed because all of their money used to get spent elsewhere in the county so they went off on their own and took the infrastructure and tax base with them.
Clayton has the only school system in the country to be disaccredited in recent history. It’s former sheriff had something more than a score of lawsuits pending against him when he lost the election last fall. He filed for bankruptcy just before he left office to avoid a six figure judgment against him. My favorite: He took office four years ago by firing a bunch of deputies, having them escorted out of the building with snipers on the roof trained on them to prevent some sort of putsch, or something. That one cost the county four or five mil.
And now, the County, according to the CEO is nine mil short between now and the first of July. Or has plenty of money according to its tax guy.
Back to the start of the post. I’m not an accountant; indeed, I hate accounting. But I know what comes in and what goes out. It isn’t that hard to keep track of. I tend to try to spend less than what comes in. In the odd difficult situation, I know what I’ve borrowed.
Just how do you spend an extra nine mil; or, have nine mil that you don’t know about?
3 comments:
Ask most any politician or now, probably most any of the big bankers or wall street guys -I betcha they can tell you how to think you have money when you don't and how to think you're broke when you're not too! Me? I know when I'm broke cause that is generally about 98 percent of the time. Nothing coming in, therefore, nothing going out either too! You're right about being able to track these things whether one is an accountant or not too -well, unless you are my son, that is! His checking account is always atrocious and he drives me bonkers with it!
If you were a government, you would need to know how much money all of US have, so you could then lose or spend it as you saw fit :-)
I have $34.02 left after vacation. I wish I had 9 mil I didn't know about!
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