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Series: Early Intervention Report, Part 1

If the Warren County Commissioners follow through on the draft recommendations presented in the Early Intervention Program presented on Monday, then county officials have a lot of work to do.

The focus of Monday’s work session was a draft copy of the report – a financial management plan – that was prepared by Susquehanna Accounting & Consulting, Inc. and paid for by grant funds through the state Department of Community and Economic Development.

Commissioner Ben Kafferlin said at the outset of the session that the commissioner’s office first heard a pitch for the program over a year ago.

“We jumped on it,” he said. “In short, they are doing a fiscal analysis and management audit of the county.”

Kafferlin said the firm initially started going through the county’s financials in late 2017, have met with almost all of the county’s directors and “have produced a lengthy document with many recommendations. Several of them are very important.”

He cautioned that while it “would be advisable to accept the consultant’s recommendation,” the commissioners won’t just outright accept all the recommendations.

“The Early Intervention Program was designed to help governmental entities take a look at what (they have) really done in the past,” Mark Morgan, managing director of Susquehanna, said.

The program also allows governments to project where they are going in the future and gain insight into “what the financial condition of the county is.” It will also identify “practice statewide they might want to consider implementing.

“As part of the plan, we looked at each department, looked at each department’s operations, identified capital and operation needs (and) looked at what systems they have in place,” Morgan said.

That allowed them to identify what “efficiencies they could achieve” as well as project “financial trends for where the county would be the next several years.”

Kafferlin called the project “very helpful” and thanked the county staff in attendance, saying it is “important for you to understand the overarching narrative.”

He suggested that 25 to 40 percent of the items identified in the report “are things we’ve already identified in recent months.”

He added that hate report would “bolster” their understanding and allow them to move forward.

Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said there are “plenty of actionable items in this report.

“I really appreciate the work that has been done here. The only issues I have with it, some of the financial trend analysis (was) done on pretty broad assumptions,” specifically regarding medical costs. “There’s a lot that this board has done to address these things” and speculated some would not turn out how they were forecasted in the report.

But, overall, he said he was “very happy with it. I look forward to continue working with you on this.”

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