The Innsbrook Board of Trustees officially approved their budget for fiscal year 2024-25 at their July 9 meeting. 

The budget projected village revenues at just over $516,000 for the coming year, and expected around $580,000 in expenses, leaving the village at a deficit of just over $60,000.  

It is important to note that many of these figures are only projections and are subject to change depending on future board decisions, along with other circumstances.

While listed under revenues on the village budget, $250,000 of that increase is coming from loan transfers to finance the new village hall and is not technically revenue.  Another $400,000 is to be transferred from the general fund to the capital projects fund to cover costs associated with the projects. 

Another $101,000, encompassing all of the village’s funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, are also allocated to the new village hall as the project looks to total at least $750,000. 

Citizens continued to voice their displeasure at the cost and allocation of ARPA funds toward the project, and felt they were being misappropriated. 

“Clearly, when we start looking at how the formation of why we are building this new building, those facts don’t add up,” said meeting attendee Virgal Woolfolk. 

Other line items of note included several expenses for services from contracted professionals like City Planner Todd Streiler, City Attorney Nathan Bruns with the Graville Law Firm and consultant Cynthia Freeman, who was hired in the wake of former City Clerk Carla Ayala’s departure. 

Freeman was also on hand to explain some of the line item expenses to citizens at the meeting, including costs related to the new village hall. 

“The information that I’ve been provided to prepare the budget is the village is looking at building some time in the next 18 to 24 months,” Freeman said. “They anticipate a maximum of $1 million but are hoping that it’s going to become less than that.”

Freeman also explained some confusion surrounding line items related to professionals contracting with the village and said that she subdivided the expenses as best she could using the village’s Intuit Quickbooks software, which she admitted is not suited for government work. 

“Quickbooks is not designed to handle government accounting, and because of that, there are some summations that occur because of the accounts, and so I did the best I could disseminating that information out into its breakdown to a village attorney, additional services, a village planner and things of that nature,” Freeman said. 

As of June 20, the Village Attorney’s office had been paid $4,000 and it was expected to remain at that figure for the remainder of the year. The projected expenses under that line item then increase to $25,000 in 2025. 

One line item that was an object of contention at the July 9 meeting was a line item located under the Village Attorney expenses. The line item, titled “Additional Services (Wags & Whiskers)”  accounted for nearly $13,000 year-to-date in 2024 and was projected to balloon to $24,000 by the end of the year. 

Freeman explained that while the expenses were incurred before she was brought on by the village, the figure of just under $13,000 was all that had been spent on additional legal services and the total of $24,000 was just that spending extended over the rest of the year. 

She went on to say that she did not personally look at those invoices although she said they were tied to accounts with the village attorney and she recorded them as such. 

Village Chairman Dan Reuter said those invoices were no longer in possession of the village although Bruns said his firm would resend those invoices to the village at the request of attendees at the meeting. 

The Innsbrook budget for fiscal year 2024-25 is available for review on the village website and can be found here: https://www.villageofinnsbrook.org/about.html.