Craig Howell MONEY TALK – Follansbee Council discussed the formatting of some of the city’s financial reports during Monday’s Committee As a Whole meeting.

FOLLANSBEE – Follansbee officials are looking into a clearer way to show the city’s financial reports in response to concerns raised during council’s Committee as a Whole meeting Monday.

The discussion was requested by Fifth Ward Councilman Joe Kafton with the hope of providing some clarity to the city’s budget, saying there may be some confusion in the reports between the city’s general fund and water and sewer budgets.

“I know it’s been brought up a few times in the audit reports,” Kafton said. “If there are overruns of any of the three major funds, it’s hard to tell.”

While Mayor Scott McMahon admitted there could be some need for clarity and offered to help work on a new dashboard for the reports, he wants to make sure residents know there has been no intermingling of the funds and that each fund is listed in separate areas of the city’s budget.

“There are line items,” he said.

City Manager Chris Manack-Stover agreed, saying the city is following state code, which requires the funds to be held in separate line items and not necessarily in separate accounts, as Kafton initially had suggested.

“The code says they have to be separate line items, not separate bank accounts,” she said.

In addition, she said if the city were to establish separate accounts for each of those areas of the budget, it would require the city to hire additional personnel to keep track of each financial account.

It was noted the city has been using AccuFund to track its financials since 2022, which has been able to provide a better picture of budgetary issues in a more real-time format. Officials reiterated that while there may have been some questionable moves in the past, the city currently tracks each of those budgetary areas separately without using one to prop up the others.

In other matters discussed Monday, Councilman-at-Large John W. Schwertfeger reported a permit had been obtained from the West Virginia Department of Transportation to allow for work on the parking lot at the Brooke County Senior Center, providing better ingress off Main Street with an exit onto Virginia Avenue.

Council also discussed the possibility of updating definitions for the city’s garbage ordinance. Council is set to hold the second reading of a garbage rate increase during its next regular meeting.

(Howell can be contacted at chowell@weirtondailytimes.com

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