By Sarah Richardson
Mayor Thomas Taylor presented a detailed report on the financial status of White Sulphur Springs at their regularly scheduled meeting held Tuesday, Oct. 14.
“A lot of this stems from our emergency meeting that we had back in September,” Taylor said, referring to the Sept. 23 emergency meeting called to address financial issues discovered within city government, including inaccurate financial reports and unapproved spending by the previous administration.
Taylor said he reviewed the city’s audit reports from 2019 through 2023. “I do not have 2024 as of yet,” he noted. “They are working on that.”
He stated that in 2019, the City overspent by $34,840, including $32,072 over budget in Streets and Transportation and $2,768 over the Coal Severance fund.
In 2020, a staggering $1,198,730 was spent in excess of the Streets and Transportation budget, and $487,937 in excess of the Culture and Recreation budget, for a total of $1,686,667 overspent that year.
In 2021, Public Safety exceeded its budget by $264,776, and Culture and Recreation by $298,695, totaling $563,471.
A total overspending amount of $603,544 was listed for 2022, with Streets and Transportation going in excess of $14,768, Health and Sanitation in excess of $566,553, and Culture and Recreation in excess of $22,223.
In 2023, the Streets and Transportation budget was spent in excess of $22,640, and Culture and Recreation in excess of $149,196, for a total of $171,836 for the year.
Overall, from 2019 to 2023, Mayor Taylor reports that there was $3,060,358 spent in excess of the City’s budgets.
“We are working diligently to pay all of our oldest invoices first, moving forward we will be contacting our vendors to set up payment arrangements to get us back where we need to be,” said Taylor.
“In the emergency meeting, I also mentioned the million-dollar fund. The money that the legislature released to the City of White Sulphur Springs in the amount of one million dollars from the sale of the airport, which is in Hart’s Run, which is now the Sporting Club property. All of that money was transferred into the Greenbrier Valley Community Foundation. With that money being transferred, the City’s earnings totaled $157,441.21 over the period of time that it was invested and placed into the Greenbrier Valley Community Foundation. What I have, $673,292.46 were for ‘capital items’ which included the other remaining funds of that. $30,000 of that was for the sewer fund for a truck, and the rest of that money was transferred into the General Operating Account to help keep the City afloat and keep everything going.”
“Mayor Taylor listed a series of withdrawals from the account until it dwindled to a point where Council authorized him to liquidate the CD’s to help the City’s financial bind.”
“What we have found is that for many, many years, the accounting of City Hall has not been proper,” said Taylor. He said that for his last two years serving on Council, he hadn’t seen the audit reports, and neither had other councilmembers. “Moving forward, it is my duty and my job to be transparent with the Council on the health of the financial status we are in, and I will do that. It’s my duty to ensure this is corrected. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be quick, it’s not going to be a fast, simple thing to correct this, but I am working daily very hard to ensure our bills are being paid and to provide the services to the citizens that we should be providing.”
