On January 20, 2020, the Vicksburg Village Council received the Financial Statements Year Ended June 30, 2019 from Maner Costerisan, Certified Public Accountants. The firm presented a clean comment free audit to the council.
Village Manager Jim Mallery said, “A consistent goal of the Village Council has been to lower our millage rate. I am proud to report that we met that goal on July 1, 2019. The millage tax rate for the Village of Vicksburg was lowered by nearly .5 mills. Though we have accomplished our goal of lowering the millage rate, it remains my firm advice and recommendation that we continue on the path of the past 3 fiscal years. We cannot return to an era that had our village engaging in practices that were not proper and performances that fell far short of basic municipal governance.”
Mallery added, “Two major accomplishments have been reached that demonstrate to the public that we are committed to financial responsibility and transparency. The first is the addition of, what we have titled, a Financial Transparency Center Section. You can find this on our new website when you click on the banner that reads ‘Financial Transparency.’ If you click on this banner it will take you to a page highlighting financial transparency. At the bottom of the page is a banner titled ‘Village of Vicksburg Transparency Center.’ Within this section of our website citizens can track where each tax dollar is spent. In addition, we have become the first governmental unit in south Kalamazoo County to live stream our governmental meetings.”
Mallery also said, “We know that as recent as 2013 the Village of Vicksburg’s unrestricted unreserved fund balance was at less than 5%. We are proud to announce this evening that our 2018-2019 fiscal year budget ended with an unrestricted unassigned general fund balance of 65%.”
The January 20 budget work session and meeting can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kr-9N3VNOc
(Please note the sound comes on when the meeting is called to order about 12 minutes into the video.)