HomeMy WebLinkAboutIR 9256 INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 9256
To the Mayor and Members of the City Council June 15, 2010
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i SUBJECT: FORMAT OF THE CITY MANAGER'S PROPOSED BUDGET
DOCUMENT
The purpose of this Informal Report is to address requests to streamline the City Manager's
proposed budget document to provide more relevant information through a more efficient format.
Traditionally staff provides City Council members with two large notebooks: 1) the Proposed
Budget book and 2) the Proposed Decision Packages in order to supplement the City Manager's
proposed budget presentation.
The Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) provides
criterion that dictate how governmental entities should submit their adopted budget document.
The objectives of the established criterion are to ensure entities provide thorough and transparent
information to their respective stakeholders. It is important to note the GFOA has presented the
Distinguished Budget Award to the City of Fort Worth each year since 1983. This distinction is
based on satisfying the program criteria.
For the FY2011 proposed budget documents, staff will continue to provide the City Council with
the aforementioned documents but will reduce the level of detail to provide the Council with the
information pertinent to decision making. The proposed components are illustrated below:
1. Proposed Budget: This will contain an executive summary of the budget process
provided via the City Manager's Message; a synopsis of major adjustments by department;
a comparison of revenues and expenditures; a departmental budget summary for each
department/fund; and any other pages required by the City Charter.
2. Proposed Decision Packages: The format has been revised from FY2010 by combining
all packages into one list. This will give the Council the ability to see the net budgetary
impact on each department budget as a result of implementing all the decision packages.
Staff will still be able to provide a copy of the entire document if requested by a Council Member.
In an effort to reduce copying cost, during last year's budget process, staff also limited the
number of budget books that were published. The proposed and adopted budget documents
were largely distributed on compact disks (CD). To promote public access to the budget, staff will
continue to provide hard copy budget books for citizen reference in each of the public libraries.
The information will also be available on the City's website.
Should you have additional _questions, please contact Horatio Porter, Budget Officer at 817-392-
2379.
�1e A. Fis I r, P.E.
City Manager
ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS