Budget Process & Goals
The City of Branson’s fiscal year runs January 1 through December 31. Typically, the budget preparation process begins in mid-July when budget documents and instructions are distributed by the Finance Department to the each city department. The various departments have approximately three weeks to assess any budget goals, capital and personnel requests, and to complete projections for the current fiscal year. By mid-August, the Finance Department completes a preliminary review of the departments’ budget, personnel and capital requests. The City Administrator then meets with the Finance Director to review any requests, and schedules one-on-one meetings with each department head.
As the first organization in Missouri to implement Priority Based Budgeting, prior to their administrative review each department head is encouraged to perform a review of programs offered by their department and to establish what programs are not meeting the results identified by the board. The purpose of this process is to allow for reallocation of resources to programs that are determined to need more funding, in place of simply incrementally increasing the departmental line item budget. Aside from simply eliminating the programs that are not achieving desired results, the directors are encouraged to develop solutions to how the identified programs may perform more efficiently. Examples include identifying programs that may be:
Mandated for the city to provide, but that
The budget process is a powerful planning tool for government to make important resource decisions. According the Carney and Schoenfeld‘s article on How to read a Budget, an operating budget is a reflection of government’s financial plans. When a budget is
Many programs and acts have been put into place to try to decrease the budget for the department. One that seemed to be the answer
The budget process for each year begins by examining how much was spent each month. For each month, a budget is created for the following year. Staff members at the unit level impact the budget with supply usage.
The Commissioners Court is required to adopt a final budget by no later than the close of the calendar year. This annual budget serves as the foundation for the County’s financial planning and control. The budget includes appropriations for the general fund, certain special revenue funds, debt service funds, and proprietary funds. The budget is prepared by fund, function, department, and object codes. Transfer of appropriations between departments requires the approval of Commissioners Court.
Mayor Nutter has detailed the proposed Fiscal Year 2016 (FY16) Budget and the Fiscal Year 2016 – 2020 Five Year and Strategic Plan to City Council. “Today, my proposed FY16 budget recommends key investments that will strengthen our communities, with a particular focus on public safety and workforce development,” said Mayor Nutter. The proposed $3.95 billion FY16 General Fund budget has nearly $90 million in added expenditures, which represents a modest increase in spending over FY15. The majority of new spending, about $78 million, will go toward rising employee costs including pension, health care and arbitration awards. The Mayor has also committed to $169.6 million in City-supported Capital investments, the highest level of capital funding since FY02. Some of the Mayor’s FY16 spending proposals include:
All departments of the City are required to submit requests for appropriation to the Finance Department on or before the first week of January each year. The Finance Department uses these requests as the starting point for developing a proposed budget. The government’s manager then reviews this proposed budget and makes adjustments to be presented to the Council at the annual budget retreat held at the beginning of March. The Council then makes any suggestions or changes in programs and policy and instructs staff to provide a budget document by the end of April, sixty days prior to the beginning of the fiscal year ("City of North Myrtle Beach," n.d.). Council then holds a public hearing and as soon thereafter as possible, adopts a budget and passes a tax levy ordinance and such other ordinances as may be required for accounting and budgetary control ("City of North Myrtle Beach," n.d.). Budget-to-actual comparisons are provided in this report for each individual governmental fund for which an appropriated annual budget has been adopted ("City of North Myrtle Beach," n.d.).
Central Office leadership, when constructing a budget, must consider all aspects of the educational process including the effects of management of support services such as facilities, transportation, and food service. Local school districts are allowed to request bonds passed by the voters of the school district zone for specific projects or general projects. The bond proposals can come in through many different avenues such as capital outlay, sinking fund, operating millage are all ways in which this can be done, each having different purposes and ways in which funding can be used. A district must understand the vital impact for effective long-term planning for facility management and transportation. If the district is not effective in
Cost/benefit analysis is a possible suggestion because the Consultation and Education Department director can argue that the benefit of the program far outweighs the cost of the program. The Consultation and Education department draw clients in and a large majority of these clients go on to participate in the larger, more funding drawing, programs. So if the department is done away with, client numbers may decrease and other programs may suffer.
The United States fiscal year 2016 is from October 1, 2015, to September 30, 2016. The requested budget was submitted to the 114th Congress. Congress creates a new budget for the United States every year. This process is also called the appropriation process. These bills specify how much money will go to the different government agencies and government programs. Congress will then have to pass legislation that will provide the federal government the authority to spend the money giving to them.
Secondly, in 2001 the organization used the remainder of the grant to “increase other administrative services.” The surplus from the grants in 2001 should have been budgeted into the growing organization and the services provided, not administrative services. “The identification of a human service agency’s programs, the creation of a program structure, the assignment of program managers, and the designation of responsibility centers are the basic building blocks of
The first phase of the cycle, consist of preparation and submission of the budget to the legislative body, which in this case is the city council. The Mayor of Birmingham submits the budget to the city council. The second phase of the cycles is approval by the city council. The third phase on the budget is execution, in this phase the approved areas of the operational budget are executed. The fourth and final phase audit and evaluation, involved the current operational budget to be
The budget includes organizational charts for multiple departments. A reader’s guide outlines the budget providing an explanation of what each section means. The budget is divided into sections: the City’s Strategic Plan, General Government revenues and expenditures, departments organized by purpose (Community Development and Public Safety), Enterprise and other funds, and Capital Improvement Programs to include Debt Management. Each major department is shown with a structure map, program evaluation, and budget summary which includes data for the two previous fiscal years. Although there have been minor changes in organization of community profile information, no significant changes to the budget have occurred in recent
The budget process for Indiana is unique. The budget for Indiana’s state government is prepared by numerous parties over a biennial time period, meaning every two years. The fiscal years begin on July 1st and end on June 30th of the following year. The budget process is comprised of four individual stages: preparation, adoption, implementation, and the audit.
The federal budget process has recommended dates and an outlined protocol. The dates are recommended, but are subjected to change with circumstances. The president presents the proposed budget on the first Monday, in February, to the congress. Mid February, the CBO presents the economy report and the outlook of the budget to the budget committees. These committees report the estimates and views on the budget to the senate committee six weeks after they receive it. On 1st April, the senate budget committee begins working on resolving the budget. Mid April, the committee finalizes on the resolution process. On 10th June, the committee of appropriation reports the final regular bill. On end June, the House completes the legal reconciliation and reconciliation legislation. Mid July, the president presents the agreed upon bill back to congress and the fiscal year begins on October 1st (Schick, A. (2008).
To avoid the loss of resources, it is a good practice for a State to review expenditure rates under each funding stream and in each local area to determine which program areas have low expenditure rates. This measurement will also be used with WIOA funding.