Ep. 16 - Stone County Treasurer, Kayla Meeker

Stone County Extension Saves the World invites their first guest on the podcast.  Stone County Treasurer, Kayla Meeker.  

In this episode Kayla talks about what she does as Stone County Treasurer, how money comes into Stone County, and how it is paid out, who decides how money is spent.  She also talks about some of the common misconceptions. We think this episode will be very informative. 

Transcript

Another day, another dollar. We're back at it again. This is a special episode. Our first guest will be coming on today. Before they get here, we're going to kind of record some of our stuff. I said I lead the past couple of days. It's an internal leadership program with the, it's not just extension like they've got people from all across the division, but it's a lot of fun. We were in Pine Bluff and Lone Oak. turned UAPB, seen what they were doing over there, and then went to Lone Oaks, seen what, there's like an extension center there. And so they've got some specialists housed there.

Or like a research station.

It's, there's research stations and then there's research centers and then there's extension centers. And I'm, they've told us a bunch and I'm still not clear on what's what, but it's like, they're an extension center.

Did you learn anything? Or what did you learn rather?

They at UAPB, like that's where they have the people that are would be like aquatic fish type specialists. And then one of the professors there is doing some sweet potato work. And he told us, I guess I can say on the podcast, but he's like, they develop virus free slips for sweet potatoes. And what they said is, so if you've ever heard you don't want to keep slips year to year on sweet potatoes. And why is that? It's a virus is what he's showing us. And so you say you plan a virus for free slip and then save a slip off that and plan it the next year. It's something that virus has probably started to infect it. And by like five or six years, like it really, you don't really want to keep your slips because you'll have lower production. Like he showed us a picture in first year from virus free, big old nice looking sweet potatoes. And then like same slip the next year that's starting to get infected with a virus. You could just see they're kind of more skinny, spindly, not as big, not as many. But what they do is meristem a tissue cultivar, like they cut a little tiny piece and then grow that in like a virus-free medium that has all this nitrogen, phosphorus. It's like a little, it looked like a clear gel and they grow it in that and produce these virus-free slips and then they heat hardens them off. They have a greenhouse and then they cut and that's what they They had all sorts of varieties. They had some purple ones. He said something about there was a white. Apparently the white is sweeter. But what he said is you want to get those stems. He said for like community gardens, he'll send those out for commercial guys. There's a charge. There's a charge. But May first. Yeah, we should get some. We could do a little demo out there at the. community garden out here. And at Pine Bluff, we went to their office there at Jefferson County. And they've got a nice little community garden like right there next to it. I took some photos. And that's kind of how I'd like this one to be designed a little bit.

Well, that's cool.

So that was cool. And then, yeah, we just kind of did tours, talked to conflict management. And then Jesse got out there, Jesse Boggsnick, our outdoor skills coordinator, our instructor. He went through the first shot fundamentals with a shotgun and everybody got to shoot a shotgun. It was fun. Yeah.

The weather was beautiful.

It was windy. Like he.

That's true. We did have a wild bar morning.

Definitely where we were. He's he had he'd like brought everything, but like the atlatls and stuff, but he's like, he's like, it's so windy. I don't need to be risking death. Imagine throwing that thing, the dart, and then it comes back at you.

Yeah, I don't think I'd want to be there for that. Those atlatls are super cool, though. He brought them out to one of our outdoor days, and they were wonderful. I think I threw them just as much as the kids.

I think we could do, I think it would be pretty easy to make like a dart thrower. I don't know if we could, that should be one of a chance. How would you make the dart? Out of a piece of bamboo.

Okay.

You can, piece of bamboo and.

Primitive weaponry.

Yeah, but that's part of outdoor skills. Jesse calls it like, it's like the hook. that brings kids in, and teaching them life skills.

Through outdoor skills.

Yeah, through outdoor skills. That's, I like the outdoor skills.

I do too. Not tying a paracord, not doing the paracord bracelets, but about everything.

Yeah, I overestimated.

Not tying is not my thing.

I overestimated my ability to do it quickly and then being able to teach kids.

And I didn't have an ability to do it myself, much less help teach.

But I was thinking about that the other day. I guess it was yesterday when Jesse was talking about it. I was like, yeah, we, because he's talking about camps. And I thought of the time that we'd, I was like, yeah, that was a good deal. Maybe not so much making paracord bracelets because.

Yeah, they're really handy though. Paracord things like we've got paracord gun sling and then My husband will make one for his key chain for his different, like our side by side and things like that. So that you always have that piece of paracord and forgot how many feet was in that bracelet though. It was quite a bit.

Yeah, I can't remember either. That's 2019.

It's been a minute. I think our special guest might be here.

All right.

Everybody. It's our first time with a guest and this guest truly needs no introduction. She's one of our favorite peeper. Peeper. Peeper. Peeper. This is going to stay in. Peeper the creeper. I'm so sorry. Oh, Kayla. Kayla or KG, I've known her literally my entire life. And she's also our Stone County treasurer and one of my besties. So happy to have you.

She decided she'd come on and educate us about what?

We thought of a guess that our stupidry wouldn't affect. We thought you. I'm glad to be out the gate.

I scared every one of them at the courthouse and told them they were all next. I was just the first one to go.

We'd be happy to have them.

Yeah, I told them all to get ready. You'd be calling them.

And this is fun. It's like we try to be fun.

Yeah, it'll be fun.

So one of the questions we were going to ask you is, It's a difficult question for us to get, but what do you do as a county treasurer?

Well, I receive all of the monies that are brought into the county from each of the offices that they receive monthly. So like the collector's office, you know, all the taxes that are collected that everyone has to pay that they love to pay. I receive all those settlements monthly and then I distribute those and then pay them out to the tax entities. that they're supposed to be paid out to. And then all of the other offices like our court systems, like our county court and our district court, they get paid out monthly to me for their settlements of like fines and fees and different things like that. And then the sheriff's office, they have their different fines and fees that they collect and they pay those out to me and distribute them out to different entities that I'm supposed to. And then it gets distributed back out and gets paid back out to different places and some of it gets sent to the state, some of it stays here local, some of it goes to our cities, some goes to our schools. So majority goes to our schools. We get, we really support our schools, which our schools get a lot of the tax money. That's how they, keep going, operating. Yeah. And so anyway, I also received money I receive money from the state. We've got our state turn back money that we receive. I get all of that. I get, we get state land revenue money from state land sales. I get forest reserve money that I have to distribute out that goes to different entities. And then I just kind of.

And grant money.

Yeah, we have grants. We have different grants. I receive a lot of different grant monies that I've got to know where it needs to go and then it usually gets distributed back out and things get paid as we, if it's especially money for the county that we do grants for like, a lot of the county grants are like their reimbursement grants, most of them, they do the work first, we turn in stuff, then they get reimbursed from what, based off of what they've done. What they actually did. That's right. And then we have to put it back to where it was spin out of, you know, and then we've got our sheriff's office, you know, they do several grants that they do. I get those, I have to put those in. And a lot of theirs are the same basis they they'll spend it first and then they get reimbursed once they turn in their receipting, their receipts, I mean, and then they get their reimbursements for what they've spent and bought based off of that grant, what type of grant it is. So yeah, we have several, a lot of money generates through my office, but it's pretty much like a pass through. And really, we were talking about this yesterday. I was talking about with the collector yesterday. It's kind of like each office kind of goes behind the other one. And it's like checks and balances for each office, so to speak. Because, the assessors got her mapping, the first of the year everyone assesses their property. They turn over their, she turns over her data to the collector. Then the collector takes in the taxes based off of what's assessed. And then she generates her monthly report. Then that's turned over to me. And then I take that and the breakdown of how it was paid to her, and I put it in to the entities that it goes to, and I pay those people out. Some of those entities, of course, stay within our county, like our county general and our county road and our county library, timber tax, which our timber tax does get paid out twice a year. But a lot of the stuff, most of it stays. A lot of people, that's one of the things, the misconception on some things, A lot of people think that our taxes, the county keeps the majority of it. And we don't. A lot of it goes out. Our county general and our county road, our county library, they do get portions of that money. But 80% of it goes to the schools. And that's where the majority of the taxpayers money that when they pay property taxes, that's where it goes back out to is the schools. We don't keep it within my office or within the county. we send it back out. And so I think that's been one of the big questions is a lot of people think that we keep it and we that's what we spend and that's what we use and that's we don't we don't have it. We it goes right back out monthly every month. So but yeah it's just checks and balances. The clerk side they pay bills. We also do that. We have the clerk, the payroll clerk side, they have accounts payable and payroll. And so she also puts in like all of our claims and our bills and she processes all of that. And then she calls me. And since I'm the holder of the checking account and I have the checks, I will put the checks in and print what she has processed. So That's another thing that's asked to me. I get a lot of calls, like if there's a check that's sent, maybe that's already been paid or a check that's sent maybe to a wrong address or something, you know, they'll call me because my name is on the check and they'll say, you know, hey, well, you sent me this check and you've already paid this. And, you know, I'll have to ask them information about it, you know, and they'll say, well, you know, You signed it. You don't know anything about it. And I'll say, well, I understand that I signed it, but I don't process anything in here. You know, they don't know that until I speak with them because they just see my name on the check. So they just assume that I do all of that in there, but I don't. That is still a part of that checks and balances thing. You know, you've got one side processing everything. You got my side that's printing it. And then That way we can go back and forth and we can check each other at the end of the month. And we do a clerk match where we go in and I check her expenditure report and I check my expenditure report and we make sure that we match up. And that's how we know we reconcile every month. And that's our checks and balances. So that's pretty much what I do every month.

So when we, so extension, we get some county money. So when I get that quarterly bill, who should I take that to?

To the payroll clerk.

To the payroll clerk. Yeah, not Kayla.

Yeah.

I'm looking at it on my, here you go.

You can, I mean, people bring me stuff and I don't usually say anything. Yeah. I don't usually say anything. I'll just take it and I'll walk it down the hall and give it to them. I mean, I know where it needs to go and, you know, I don't care to see faces because I'm used to dealing with the public and then I got this job and I don't really deal with the public and I really like people. So I don't mind if people come in, I'll visit with them and I'll take what they need. down wherever they need it. So that's fine.

Who decides how to spend the money?

So we, when we do our budget every year, we pass out sheets to each department and they kind of fill out, in each of their line items what they think they need or are going to spend or if they want to keep things the same way. And then that is taken to quorum court and they approve or deny the budget. And then that point forward, that money is allowed to be spent out of those budgets. If there's more that's needed, then, of course, we do an appropriation ordinance at those meetings. And that also gets voted on by the quorum court. And they're really ultimately the ones to decide to appropriate money to be spent. Now, as far as the spending itself on what you can spend on and so on and so forth, each department has the authority on what to spend on what. Now, there's on certain funds, there's certain laws of what you can and cannot buy. And then there's certain amounts where If you go over a certain amount, you have to, put what they call a tag on it, for audit purposes, because it's over a certain amount of money. And then there's also certain things if you buy that it's over a certain amount of money, you have to also take that to the quorum court as well. I don't know if that necessarily answers your question, but that's, I mean, everybody pretty much has the authority to decide like what's spent and how it's spent, but they are the ones who appropriate it.

Yeah, the quorum court is made-up of your justices of the peace. Stone County, we have nine, is it? That's right, yes. And then we go, try to go as often as we can, and we give our report. on, what we've got going on and stuff. And again, like extension gets, we get state funding, there's some federal money, but then in county also.

Is an important part of our funding.

Is an important part and adds quite a bit to our budget that we get.

And so and when people say why do you talk in counties like why is it Stone County or why is it and these are the reasons is these funding and the appropriations and so it's nice like me and KG can speak county and that's one thing that yeah people always like why is it county why is it and that's because of the property tax and the money divisions and appropriations.

And those quorum court meetings, they're open to the public. They are.

Yeah. We also have, sometimes we'll have quarterly meetings as well. Each quorum court member are also a part of different committees. And so some, depending on what committees there are, some of them we have like quarterly meetings or sometimes they'll do a meeting, you know, it just depends on like what's needed when.

Yeah, I know.

And those are also open to the public. They're made known by law. You have to put those in the paper, advertise those, and we have to send that out. And those are also open to the public. I didn't know that.

That's good enough.

So like we'll have like a quarterly budget meeting. We do quarterly cleanups if you know anybody needs any more money appropriated that needs to be taken to the court and court. You know, we go over kind of how everybody's doing on their spending, make sure everybody's staying within their allotted, appropriated budgeted amounts in their budgets. And, kind of if they're going to need more, especially when it gets closer to the end of the year, you might be kind of getting close to that in some of your lines. And something that's beautiful, I think that another thing that I think people don't really understand is like we have our original budgeted amount And we can, there's certain lines and there's so much money in each of those lines. And if you need money, say you don't have enough maybe in this line, but there's enough in this line, you can transfer that and you're still within your original budgeted amount that's been approved. So you don't actually, you're not adding new money You're just moving it from one to another and it's not new money. It's within your budgeted amount that you originally budgeted to start the year with. And so I think that's one of the questions that we've had. I think there's another question that we've had. You know, a lot of everybody's budgets, we all of us have, and y'alls are included in this, a county general budget. And that's the main one that we have to take to quorum court really and kind of ask, on if we can have money for this or that, have money appropriated for this or that, to be spent for, whatever is needed. And, but each one of us also have what we call special, special budgets and are our special funds. And those are not taxpayer, taxpayer money. That's money that we get, like mines off of, I can by state law take a 2% commission of everything that is brought in that I receipt. So any revenue that's brought into my office, as long as it's not like grant money or things like that, I can receipt it and I can take a 2% commission. And then at the end of the year, all of that commission is distributed back out over all of the funds. So they all get a big lump sum at the end of the year. And then I can take 10% of the total at the end of the year and go into an automation fund to help operate my office. And that way I don't have to spend out of my actual county general fund, my county general treasurer's fund. I can spend out of my county treasurer automation fund and it's not taxpayer money. It's just, it's just money set aside for me to take commission from and I can spend that without having to go ask for it. I mean, I have to obviously put it into an appropriation ordinance for them to approve, but I can't, I have the authority to be able to decide what I'm going to spend it on within the realms of the law. Yeah.

So that might be like a new computer or printer for your office.

Exactly. Anything operational for my office. And I found out as coming in as a new treasurer, which I thought was really fascinating, that our treasurer's automation funds, we can, if there's enough money, we can buy a car out of those funds for us.

For business purposes.

Yes, to drive to, you know, our meetings, to drive to the post office, to drive to the bank. We can do that. But the difference between us and like, say the county buying a car out of the county general fund, if they bought one out of the county general fund, everybody can use it. can be like a community car, so to speak. If A treasurer buys a car out of a treasurer's automation fund, the treasurer is the only one that can drive it. cannot be like a community county car. So a lot of treasurers don't buy. I don't plan to buy one. We're in a small town. Now, bigger cities, I could probably see where they would do that. They'd have to drive. I mean, you know, the post office is a mile, not even maybe a mile from.

In these meetings that you go to, there's a lot of law changes. And so that's one thing interesting since you've been in office, understanding that you're going and having to participate, because every time a law changes, that affects our counties and a lot of different things.

Yeah, it does. You know, we just had that one recently with our district court and how we divvy the money up between our district court and our cities. And it's really funny, and I don't know if it's like this with you guys, but like, each county does things differently. Oh, absolutely. And so, like with us, it confused several people with this law change because part of the counties held the district court budget and then part of the cities held the district court budget. it only affected the people who held, it only affected the cities who held the district court budget. So like us, like Stone County, we hold the district court budget. So nothing changed for me. I didn't have to make any changes. The only thing that I had to change was We usually would have to, once we distributed the money that was received for district court, received for district court every month, their settlements, we would receipt all that. And then Department of Finance and Administration gets a monthly check every month from us. And then City Mountain View would get a portion. And based off of our percentages of, they usually would end up with $826 a month. That's what they would end up with. Well, since this new law changed, now they get half of everything that's brought in from, that is collected from district court and county court. And, but I mean, I'm not county court, I'm sorry, district court. And so they were able to really benefit from that because that went from from $826 a month every month to now it's like it runs from 3 to $5,000 depending on what's brought in. So the cities, in our case, the city benefits better because of that, because we held the budget. Now on vice versa of that, some counties, other counties, their cities hold that budget. So they might have benefited better. just depending on who held the district court budget. And I think a lot of people were really confused, because they all did it differently. And so there's been a lot of questions and it's been going on since August. And so that was probably one of the biggest law changes since I've been in office that it's like, well, how are we going to know that we're doing it correctly? And the answer they gave us is, well, if you send you're reporting and your money to DFNA, they can tell you how much you're supposed to send them. And so they'll tell you if it's wrong, they'll call you. They'll be calling you and saying, hey, this is the wrong amount of money. You owe us this amount or you've paid us too much. And I said, I think I asked the question, I said, will they really call us and tell us if we paid them too much? Like seriously, you know, just like kind of joking, but not seriously too. I mean, does anybody ever really call and say, well, you paid too much? You know, but But anyway, they said that they'll know like to the penny what you'll owe. And so that made me feel better. Like, well, that'll be easy to figure out. That's another check. Yeah, it's another thing that'll be like a check and balance thing. Like it's easy to kind of figure out and kind of navigate. But you also have to have, within that law, you have to have an inter-local agreement with your city of how you're going to split the district court, if you're going to split the district court budget or who's going to pay what, because some of them, like especially in these smaller counties, and something you were just kind of touched on before, like how we talk about counties.

Yes.

We talk about that too. Like I know with us, when we go to our meetings, we talk about that way because they're also divvied out by class size. And so, And what size class are we? are class 2. And I believe that runs between, if you've got between like, it's like 10,000 something to 19,000 or something like that. And I think we're sitting around 12. So we're not real far into a class too. No, we're not real far into a class too. We're sitting in around like 12, like right, maybe right under 13,000 residents in Stone County. And so, but there's seven classes. And so your class 7 counties is going to be your biggest ones, like, your Fayetteville area, your Little Rock area. those are the big, big counties that have a lot of money, a lot more money than what we're seeing, and they've got, a lot more employees and a lot of more like distributions. And even some of those cases, they've got combined offices too. So where they have to, maybe be responsible for maybe not just the treasurer's office, but also the collector's office there combined, or maybe the sheriff and collector combined, just kind of like we've got our county and circuit clerk combined, so you'll see that in bigger counties, especially there, but they have a lot more money that they're dealing with and they have a lot more people that they can hire to help deal with that money in the checks and balances. So But we talk about that a lot. So we had to, we kind of had an advantage when that law changed because we set up an interlocal agreement a long time ago, back in 2014, between the city and the county to be able to just split the district court budget just 50-50 down the middle.

It was not.

It was not a change at all. The only thing that changed and that really helped was when we redid the paperwork, they just had to change the verbiage on what the new law states. They took the old law verbiage out and then what the new law states. And then every year from that point forward, anytime we do our budget, if the amount changes on the district court budget, then we'll turn that to the city. And then when they go to pass their budget, they'll go pass it at their city council meeting. Yeah, they'll go to, they'll take it to their city council meeting, they'll pass it, and then they cut us a monthly check for half, half of the total of the district court costs. Because we share, we have a city sheriff district court, we share that, because we're all in the same court complex. And so it actually worked out beautifully for Stone County. Now, some other counties, they are having a big change, a big problem. And it's very confusing and they can't agree with their cities or the cities can't come to an agreement with them about how they're going to split it out or what they're going to do, you know, for district court. So there's things like that change every day that we, it's important, I feel like, to go to these meetings. Because if you don't know about these law changes, then you're just going to be in the dark still doing things, like you normally do.

And you're responsible for following the new changes.

Absolutely. And if you don't, they'll let you know about that too. Yeah. I would imagine. Yeah. So.

Yeah, you do get audited, right?

We do.

Yeah.

Everybody gets audited every year. Yeah. We sure do.

Which is good. Everybody, and that's just important that. It is, yeah. Everybody's checked.

Yep. They check us out real good. And I got broke in real good that first year, so. I was very shell-shocked. We'll just say that.

It's amazing too, you elected officials, like there's no like special training, which you said you get a mentor when you come into office, but there's no like, here's how to do your treasury work.

Nope, there's a website.

Yeah, that's good. That's kind of how it is in extension. It's like, figure it out.

Yep. There's a website out there that we have. It's our Association of Arkansas Counties down in Little Rock. They literally will post just like a guideline how to, so to speak, of each elected official office and what that job entails, what you do, and kind of how to do it. But to me, I'm more of a hands-on person. I want to, I got to know what's happening. I got to see it.

Got to be in it.

Yeah. I can't just read something and, oh, okay, I got it, you know, and do it. So it took me, you know, being kind of in it. And thankfully I followed someone really good, you know, that was very organized and had done it for a long time. And I think a lot of people are not blessed with that. I was blessed in that area. And I think a lot of people are not blessed coming in. they'll have people leave angry and they might delete everything out. You hear these horror stories about, how someone left on bad terms. They're mad and they delete everything out of the system and say, just figure it out. man. That would be awful. It would be. Yeah.

I'm so glad. Yeah, Carla wouldn't do that to you.

No, she was excellent. She was excellent. And, you know, she even was so nice. She let me come up there, you know, and sit with her and kind of watch how she did some things before I came in. But there was still just so much to learn that Because you have different things throughout the whole year.

That's right. So really.

Yeah, and there's things that are due monthly. There's things that are due quarterly and things that are due once every six months and then things that are due once a year. And the once a year things is what gets me the most because it's everything else is pretty repetitive. You do everything else, you know, really on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis, I can remember those great. And then when you get to that yearly, it's like, I've done it maybe three, three times now. I've got to go back and look how I did it last year so I can remember how to do it and make sure the law didn't change on it. So I'm still doing it correctly. And they don't call me, you know, and knock me down with it audit time.

I understand a little bit I'm not dealing with county money, so it's a little more stressful.

Yeah.

You had kind of touched on some misconceptions. So you don't, like you kind of touched on this, like you don't decide how that money's spent, say for an office. You're going to, if it's within their account, how does that work?

So honestly, it goes through a chain of command. And of course, you know, the county judge is considered like the CEO of the county. And so you've got your department head, which would be like, say the, elected official of that office, they'll put in something that they've bought and they code it based off of our budget books that we make up every year. So they'll code it to a line, then they'll bring it over, they'll turn it into the payroll clerk's office, and then she'll look at it and she'll kind of double check them, you know, to make sure if it's coded correctly and everything, she will turn it over then to the county judge to go through the claims and kind of double check her. So it's kind of a chain of command. Three people are really looking at it before it actually comes to me. And so I'm kind of under that umbrella, so to speak. So if it's approved through those three people to sign off on, then by law, I have to print it. I have to cut that check. The only time I can say, no, I'm not doing this, is if my actual fund, and that's a misconstrued thing too, we've got funds, which I call my real money, that's the real money. And then on their side, the clerk's side, we call that monopoly money, because they're just going off of budgets and lines and what's been appropriated and what's been appropriated. You have the real money. Right. And not all of the money that's in my funds have been appropriated. You know, we have a certain percentage budgeted, and there's still, so much left over here that can be appropriated, that we've kind of gotten reserved, so to speak. And so, but anyway, once it goes through that chain of command, if he signs off on it, he turns it in, then I print it, and then it goes out the door. And so it's got to be approved through those people.

Are you the only one that can write a check?

Yes, because I hold the checking account myself. My name is on the check and I'm the only one that can sign it. And so that's ultimately why we do it that way, just because I know a lot of people are like, well, some people have asked me, you don't process it, but you sign it. How can you be okay with signing something that you don't process? Well, again, we fall under that umbrella of there's three people checking it, signing off on it before it comes to me. And I'm under that umbrella of a law where, again, by state law, I have to. I don't have a choice. Now, my fund itself, if it's going to throw the fund into the red, I can say, no, I'm not pregnant because it's going to throw my fund in the red and I legally cannot do that. But otherwise, I got to send it out the door. And so, but, and I understand like where people come from when they're like, why on earth would you, sign one of your checks on something that someone turns in that you're not processing? I get that. But I'm also on the flip of that, I'm not going to just take a stack of checks and I'm not going to, no offense, I love all of the people that I work with and I trust all of the people that I work with. But rightfully so, none of them, I don't feel like would take a stack of checks with their names on them and their account numbers and go and say, here's a stack of my checks.

Yeah, just print whatever you need.

You process your checks and just print them and bring them down here and I'll sign them. Because then if you get one that's missing, What happens? I mean, yeah, they're blank, obviously, when you get them. They're a blank check, they go into a printer, everything's computerized, and so it prints out, and then I sign it once it's printed out. But still, what if one comes up missing? I mean, that's where audit comes in, and they're like, well, hey, where's this check number?

Yeah, and you have to show where it's out.

So that's why we kind of have our checks and balances, and we hold, I hold the checks in my office, that have my name and my account number. And that way when she processes it, she can call and say, I've got checks in, can you print them? And I'll print them and I'll sign them and we'll send them out the door. And that way everybody's kind of got a part playing in this and we can kind of check each other and go behind each other and make sure everything's going, doing right, doing the right way, like it's supposed to be doing. And that transparency's out there. And we can also have proof of what we've done and why we've done it and where it comes. And that's something else I think people don't realize. I know a lot of people know this, but a lot of people don't know. You know, we, everything is completely public record. You know, people can come in at any time if they don't know, you know, or if they think they know how the money is spent, or if they think money's going here, money's going there, they can walk into my office at any time and say, hey, can you print me a report of this person's budget and their itemized budget detail, which comes from the clerk's side? I can print that too. I can show them the funds. I can give them anything that they ask for because it's public record. I can sit with them and show them anything they want to know and tell them anything about it. And, my office is open door. If they want to come, I'll welcome them with open arms. I'm happy to answer anything that they want to know about it. So I think a lot of people don't realize that, you know, if they'll get upset, you know, maybe about a road or get upset about this or that, you know, they think, well, they're just pocketing the money. no, it doesn't work like that. can't be done because they have to go through me.

Man, you're not.

And that ain't happening. Sorry about it. Not on my watch. I'm not going to jail for nobody. Sorry about it. So, but yeah, I always try to tell anybody when they're upset and think, you know, money's not being spent correctly or that they can see. They're more than welcome. Yeah, they're more than welcome to come in and see for themselves where it's at, where it's spent, how much we have, whatever they want to see. That's one of the beauties of America right there.

One of your rights as a citizen.

Yep, absolutely. I do have a story, actually. I was thinking about that while you were asking that. And My dad always likes to put me on the spot at these public events that we go to and we have to speak at during these political events. And so, he'll come up and say, well, this is my daughter, yada, yada, you know. Well, we've got these circuit judges running for office and, you know, there's several of them. And so afterwards, I go through and I shake all their hands, and so he comes at me, this is my daughter. he started that spiel again. Here we go. And they're like, oh yeah, he's like, well, did you know one time, she's our county treasurer here. Well, did you know one time, they could have got her at one time for Grand Theft Auto, and they'll kind of look at me and they'll kind of look at him, and he'll talk about, how back when I was a teenager, we had a friend that was at his girlfriend's house and we knew he always left the keys in his car. And I mean, it was just an innocent thing. We were just driving down this small little back street and there his car was parked in her driveway. Well, there was a little church just right across the street. I mean, literally right across the street. And so we thought it would be funny for her to my friend to stop and I'd hop out and I'd run over there and hop in the car and I'd back it out and go park it in the church parking lot. That way when he'd come out, he wondered where his car was at, you know? And so I did that. And Backstory on that, back then we didn't have cell phones. So, your parents couldn't track you. Yeah. They couldn't call and find out where you were. Well, I would have a curfew. You know, they'd say, well, be home at this time, even if you're staying with so-and-so, you get home and you tell them, you call me and tell me that you've made it there at this time. You know, so we'd go and we'd call them and I'd say, we're here. We've made it to her house, and they'd say, all right. And then we'd say, good night, hang up, and then we'd leave. And we'd go back out, And so that's what we did that night. And so anyway, so I had gotten in that car and I backed out and we were, we thought we were being stealthy. We was wearing, you know, durags and we had these little black lines under our, I don't know, why, but we had these little black lines. Yeah, we were being stealthy. And so anyway, I got that car and I went over and parked it. And boy, I was just running back across there and I seen her mom come out on the front porch. And I heard her say, Kayla Gardner, I know that's you and I'm calling your dad. And I thought, oh no. And so we booked it just back to her house. And by the time we got back to her house, I had no more got back to her house and we got to the door And my dad pulled in and he said, we're going to go over and apologize. You got an apology to make. So we drove over to the lady's house and I knocked on the door and she come out and I apologized. And boy, she lit into me and she started telling me, you know, about how I was, she had said I used to be a good kid, and I've just been hanging around with this bad crowd of kids, and I was just a little delinquent these days. For moving a car. Yeah, for moving a car. And if I didn't start, if I didn't start changing and going and hanging out with some good kids again, one of these days I was going to end up in jail, you know. And that was the part of the story dad had left out with these circuit judges. You know, he was acting like he had done the right thing, you know, take us, and he did. Sure. As a parent, he did the right thing taking us over. I probably would do my kid the same way.

I've had to do not make my kid apologize, but I've had my parents make me go apologize.

And I'd probably make my kid go do that too. But I mean, she just really lit me up. And you know, I'd already said I was sorry and everything. And my dad finally, boy, he's getting mad over there. And he finally got to a point. He said, okay, you know, I think we've had enough. And I think we're done. She's done. She come over here and she apologized. And I think you're done chewing on her. I think we're done. I think we're going to head on home. You know, we went home. He left that part of the story out where he got mad and let her know real quick that we were done apologizing and that part of it was over. You know, but he didn't sure didn't tell him that. So. But you did. I sure did though, but it made me so happy. So he don't tell that story anymore. Anytime we don't talk to anybody. Yeah, he don't tell that one anymore.

He didn't tell your grand theft auto.

No, he don't tell him that grand theft auto story anymore because he knows I'll add that in there when he leaves it out. So.

Oh, Roger.

Yeah.

Well, do we just want to finish this one out and it be its own?

Yeah, we can just finish that.

Yeah. Well, do you think it was pretty informative?

I thought it was good.

I'm hoping.

How much time is it?

Did it feel smooth for you?

Yeah, I was fine with it.

I think we could say like bye and sign up.

No, that's what I'm saying. That's why I'm asking. Yeah. I think it's a good time to. Yeah.

Well, I think we can wrap her up.

Yeah, thanks for coming.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Come back. Yeah. Feel for it. I think it's good. It was good.

I had fun.

Well, I think I myself don't have a clue what a treasurer does. But I do have one more thing before we close out. let's say some youth may be interested in a county office one day. What do you think might be something you suggest? Or what experience helped you become a treasurer?

I think my banking background really helped me and it helped me want to do that job. You know, that was kind of, for me, it was more of a step up from the banking world and it's not corporate, it's government. So that I kind of wanted to be on that side of it to kind of see how that worked. But yeah, I think my banking experience has really helped me to really kind of fit in that role and kind of helped me be able to figure out the best way to help us gain more revenue in there. Because there are things that I can do with certain Monies to invest invest money and get us and make more money for the county, which is wonderful. get us some more revenue into the county. And I have done that. I've been able to invest some money that we've had in some funds and we've made like right under a couple 100,000 bucks in a year just off of interest alone. for that. And also, I had negotiated too, like our checking account when we come in. I think that's helped coming from banking is because you can go and talk to banks about, interest rates and sometimes they fluctuate and they change. And, we've had that same checking account for years and going in there and saying, hey, we've been at this interest rate for so long, and we've been good customers and loyal customers. What about is there a possibility maybe we could get a little bit higher interest rate or whatever? And we did, we ended up getting on our checking account. We went from like, I think it was like 0.8% to 2.15. And so my interest on my checking account alone jumped from like 7 to $8,000 a month to like 18 to $20,000 a month.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Yeah. And so, and I actually, we had looked at it for the year and I think it was like, look, because I had texted it, I had texted it to one of the other elected officials the other day, because I was just- Blown away. I was blown away. It was unbelievable at how much we had gotten in that checking account. But what we do with that checking account is I distribute that back out. I kind of give a little piece of that pie to all of our funds to kind of have some of that money. Now, the ones I invested in the CDs, that was like money that we had sitting there. that we had gotten off of our one cent general sales tax. it was just had kind of grown and it only got what it would get off of that checking account. And so I thought, I could take some of it and I could invest in a CD and get us some more interest money. Just let it grow and let it build for us, and build for the county. So that's what I did on that. And I was pretty proud of that. I think that helped me kind of have an advantage of being able to come and do this job and kind of know that side of it.

Yeah, to know those were options for you.

Yeah, for sure. But again, I mean, there's no training.

Yeah.

Like we had talked about before. So I don't really know.

Yeah, as far as that, but at least, that background helps you.

I think it helped, and you got to be pretty decent at math, I think, maybe.

I would hope.

Yeah, I think you got to be pretty decent at math.

I don't think you have to worry about me running against you.

Nor me.

I thank you so much for coming.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, definitely.

I can't wait to go tell one of the next ones when I go there. I like to aggravate them a little bit that they're next.

Give them a fictional date to scare them.

Oh, okay. I will.

It's really not that bad. It's not.

I've enjoyed it. I've had a great time.

We try to keep it informal.

Yeah, I like that. I like that. I've had a good time. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. Kayla Meeker, Stone County Treasurer.