VALPARAISO – Porter-Starke Services will receive $452,989.50 out of Porter County’s general fund, money the non-profit technically should have received at the end of 2013.
VALPARAISO – Porter-Starke Services is getting its due, albeit a bit late.
The mental health services agency will receive $452,989.50 out of Porter County’s general fund, money the non-profit technically should have received at the end of 2013.
The matter came up before the County Council last week when council members and Auditor Vicki Urbanik said the money would come out of the rapidly dwindling general fund balance of just under $1.6 million that carried over from 2014.
Council members said they didn’t know the money hadn’t been paid out to Porter-, and Council President Dan Whitten-D-At-large, called it “a trailing liability” from the previous auditor.
“We collected this revenue in 2013 because it’s part of Porter-Starke’s tax levy,” Urbanik said, adding the agency should have received $1.8 million in 2013, with half of that going to the agency in June, and the remainder coming through in December.
But by the time December 2013 rolled around, Urbanik said the general fund had “severe cash flow problems,” and the auditor at the time, Bob Wichlinski, opted not to give Porter-Starke its full amount to keep more money in the general fund.
Porter-Starke received the balance due, sort of, in early 2014. By the end of the year, though, that money had been rolled into the $1.9 million Porter-Starke had coming from its tax levy for that year, so the agency finished 2014 still short the money.
“I want to bring this to a resolution. Porter-Starke deserves this money,” Urbanik said.
Porter-Starke received about half the money it expected at the end of last year, said Mary Idstein, the agency’s chief financial officer. She talked to Urbanik and was assured the matter was being worked out.
“We actually received the money. They just took it out of the next year’s funding,” Idstein said. “We were never shorted.”
To the best of Urbanik’s knowledge, the payout to Porter-Starke was the largest outstanding balance that the county didn’t know about.
“What’s so bad about this is, we collected on their behalf and didn’t pay them,” said Councilman Bob Poparad, D-At-Large.
Wichlinski was using the money to cover other expenses, said Councilman Jim Biggs, R-1st District, but Whitten said Wichlinski should have told the council what was going on.
With at least $900,000 coming out of the general fund balance for the sheriff’s department pension over the course of the year, in addition to the money that’s going to Porter-Starke, the council promises it will be clamping down on funding requests from department heads.
“Quite candidly, there’s not enough money coming in,” Whitten said.
