Charlotte County reports healthy utility reserves, details SRF/SOFIU funding and Burnt Store expansion timeline

Rick Arthur, Charlotte County fiscal services manager, told the Board of County Commissioners on Jan. 13 that the utilities fund finished the latest fiscal year with stronger-than-expected results and that staff will update the Raftelis financial model this month to incorporate FY25 actuals and the FY26–27 budgets.

“We ended up putting about 33,000,000 into reserves this year, pretty close to his forecast of 31,” Arthur said, summarizing the year’s capital and operating timing effects. Arthur said the county projects a utilities fund balance near $120,000,000.

Arthur reviewed revenue drivers and cautioned that some capital purchases budgeted this year have not yet been received and may charge to next year’s expenditures, affecting the timing of reserves. He said connection fees — driven by recent growth — exceeded last year’s forecast by about $1,314,000 (as reconciled by staff), a factor that materially improved the utility’s position.

On federal and state financing, Arthur said the State Revolving Fund (SRF) clean-water cap for the year looks to be about $20,000,000 and that the county is also evaluating projects for the drinking-water program. Separately,…