Custer County public health staff outline $90,000 budget gap, order AEDs and set accounting fixes

Custer County public health staff told the Board of Health at a budget workshop that their 2026 request assumes about $438,000 in grant and other revenue while projected expenses run about $526,000, leaving a shortfall of roughly $88,000–$92,000 that the county would need to cover.

The shortfall matters because most of the uncovered expenses are salaries, benefits and insurance lines paid from county funds rather than grant accounts; workshop participants spent most of the meeting tracing how earlier accounting and coding choices have made current rollover and revenue estimates uncertain.

Public health administrators and county finance staff walked through three years of actuals and the '26 request, describing multiple instances in which grant deposits, payroll and invoices were coded to the wrong account and saying a detailed reconciliation is needed before certifying final numbers. Vernon (county finance staff) said he had plugged the health department’s submitted numbers into the county budget system so the group could see the “bottom line” and test scenarios; health staff said the department will go line‑by‑line through each grant and historical receipts to confirm rollover balances.

Staff reported several recurring problems: state and other grant payments sometimes arrive in lump sums or as checks with sparse descriptors; deposits have occasionally been posted to the wrong grant line; and previous payroll coding sometimes…