PRINCE EDWARD — County supervisors received some good financial news at their September 10 board meeting.

General fund revenues from this past budget year ending June 30 were up $323,000.

“This positive outcome was primarily the result of real estate, personal property and local sales tax exceeding budgetary amounts,” detailed County Administrator Wade Bartlett.

*Specifically, approximately $6.5 million will be collected in real estate taxes, or almost $53,000 more than budgeted. Overall, the figure represents a 1.6 percent or $105,000 increase over fiscal year 2012 collections.

*Slightly more than $3,238,000 will be collected in personal property, or a 3.4 increase (almost $108,000) over 2012. It is more than $188,000 over what was budgeted.

*Collections in local sales taxes were up three percent, $77,000 more than last year and almost $142,000 more than budgeted.

“While that local sales tax was not a record amount,” Bartlett told the board, “it was the second highest amount collected—trailing only the amount collected in fiscal year ’08 and is an indication of the rebounding economy.”

Overall, Bartlett further detailed, the fund balance will increase about $400,000.

“The fund balances of the remaining funds when combined together will remain flat,” he told the board. “Overall, the County should see an increase in the cash balance of about $400,000 to a total of $11.1 million. Of course, final accounting and audit adjustments could alter these results.”

That was last year’s budget, of course. While the additional funds will have an impact on the county’s overall finances, the current budget (which kicked in July 1) looks to draw on the County’s fund balance (also considered a deficit) by approximately $900,000.

“I’m certainly delighted that we have additional money…how — when you factor in other things that we have expended money for that we hadn’tincluded in the budget—how are we now as far as $900,000 goes,” asked Farmville District (701) Supervisor Jim Wilck. “Are we down to $500,000 or are we about the same at ($900,000) or…?

Bartlett responded that it’s about the same, stating that they have not made any major expenditure increases since July 1 unless they were associated with a grant or some other funding “so I don’t see a big difference at the moment.”

He added that they don’t have very much data to predict whether they were going to be above or below budgetary amounts in revenues yet.