Over the past several months, while the Finance Department focused on Financial Management Information System conversion, former Finance Director Dana Shigley provided the City with extensive consulting work in assembling the final budget document. I would like to thank Mrs. Shigley for her outstanding work on this project. I would also like to thank Finance Director Linda Watkins-Gallino for her significant contributions and to thank each department head and their key staff members for all of their hard work in preparing goals, objectives, operating, and capital improvement budgets. Lastly, I would like to thank the City Council for your guidance in establishing our City priorities for the year. I think it important to note that your management team was able to assemble a final budget that provides adequate appropriations to enable us to accomplish almost all of the goals and objectives outlined in our March workshop.
Management plans to regularly review our progress towards achieving our budget goals and objectives.
We will formally report back to the City Council periodically with mid-budget reports on how the City is doing compared to budget both fiscally and with respect to our established goals and objectives. Implementation of the new Financial Management Information System will greatly assist management in monitoring the City budget, and will enable the City to employ encumbrance accounting for the first time. This balanced budget was achieved despite the difficulty of a doubling in the City's workers compensation insurance premiums. In order to maintain a balanced general fund in the face of this significant increase in workers compensation premiums, two large items helped balance the general fund budget. These are items that cannot be relied upon over time.