Manteca’s projected general fund deficit for the current fiscal year that started July 1 has been more than halved.

That means instead of having to dip into general fund reserves for $9.5 million as the city believed they had to do when the budget was adopted on June 15, the amount is now $4 million.

Acting Finance Director Jared Hansen delivered the final budget correction for the adopted 2021-2022 fiscal year during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

The new numbers are the result of a making the final corrections to the budget after the financial department has unraveled its bookkeeping snafu.

A year ago this month based on an initial preliminary look at the city’s financials by outside experts trying to sort out an massive accounting disarray that included not making entries to the general ledger showed as much of $68 million not properly accounted for.

The issues stemmed from departments keeping what were essentially separate books, the cost of projects being duplicated, revenue not be assigned to the correct accounts, inter-fund loans not being properly recorded and similar issues.

The city has received almost $14 million in COVID relief funds.

Although the City Council has yet to decide how that money will be spent, the intent by Congress was for it to cover unexpected expenses local government have incurred dealing with the pandemic and to help cover losses stemming from lockdowns that reduced spending and in turn local tax receipts.

The council and previous city management indicated that would likely be one use of the funds that have relatively few restrictions on its use.

By using the COVID funds to backfill the reserves the city’s general fund budget would be made whole and the structured deficit eliminated.

It would also mean less than $10 million of the one-time federal funds would remain for other uses if the council backfilled the general fund reserves in that manner.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com