2019_0318_CCPacket - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Attachment B Chair Schroeder asked if there was a way the Commission could get the detailed information they need without it being costly or burdensome for staff. Finance Director Miller stated all of the data that he uses is in an Excel format. Commissioner Zeller stated the new version of Excel has a feature called Tree Mapping which would be similar to Tableau. As an accountant, he would find it helpful to have a comprehensive trial balance with account titles, balance, and credit or debit. Commissioner Bachhuber stated a higher level of detail would be helpful for the Commission to do their job and challenge assumptions in the budgeting process. Chair Schroeder asked what it would take to get a summary trail balance for the Commission to review. Commissioner Zeller stated he would like to see this include a summary of each account in the trial balance including the ending balance and credit or debit. Finance Director Miller stated they do not produce this much detail for the auditors but this is something that would be available internally. He could provide a summary for the Commission on areas that they are interested in looking into. Chair Schroeder stated this would be good information for the Commission to start with and they can determine where to go from this point. Finance Director Miller stated he would send out what the current program provides and the Commission can look at the format and determine if this is something that would be useful to the work they are doing. Discussion on Establishing a Cash Reserve Fund Chair Schroeder stated this was a concept she would like the Commission to consider. All of the funds have a reserve amount that they need to have and this fluctuates for every fund from year to year. This makes it difficult to determine if the overall reserve is up or down. If each department or fund area put the reserve amount they need for the year in their budget documents. This would be an additional line item and all of the over or under amounts would be calculated in one fund. She clarified this would be for the unrestricted operating reserves. The amount in the final account would be what is over or under each department reserve requirements. This would make it easy to determine of the budget was over or under each year. This would provide a clear picture of what the City’s total surplus or deficit was for the year. She suggested Commissioners consider this and put together comments or questions for a future Commission discussion. Commissioner Bachhuber asked how this would be different than the one spreadsheet the Commission provided to the Council that combined all of the accounts. He also asked what the