The above is an excerpt from the latest City Manager’s Report.
What is CAFR Unlimited? "It is a highly specialized financial report writer specifically designed to assist government finance professionals in producing presentation-quality financial reports. Many customers have said that the CAFR Unlimited product has made their audits go much more smoothly, saving both time and money.."
It aids those who must do a comprehensive annual financial report which states a government's "true worth."
CAFR Unlimited further states that "it gives you the ability and independence to produce your financial statements in-house relatively easy while reducing some of the possible SAS 115 deficiencies that can occur with manual processing. It also provides tools for meeting other reporting requirements, such as budget, grant and state regulations. The software is GASB 34 and GASB 54 compliant."
Finding the subject of CAFR's on the City Manager's Report interesting because of my latest communications with Dr. Steve Rosen, businessman, on budgets and CAFR’s, I wanted to share his thoughts with you.
A little on Dr. Rosen: Dr. Rosen has been a guest blogger on this Blog. He is an astute businessman who cares deeply about the environment, our wildlife (animal rights is the most unextreme philosophy imaginable) and the over development of our State that has caused its collapse. Some may find this incongruent to his activism in animal rights but he says, I am a vegetarian, but a lifetime member of the NRA and member of Gun Owners of America."
He became passionate about animals, our environment, and over-development in our State way before it became fashionable and some thought it even radical and long before Florida Hometown Democracy came on the scene. (Amendment 4 is a ballot initiative on November 2, 2010 that will help curb the over-growth and devastation of our State by allowing the residents to vote on Comprehensive Plan land-use changes)
He became passionate about animals, our environment, and over-development in our State way before it became fashionable and some thought it even radical and long before Florida Hometown Democracy came on the scene. (Amendment 4 is a ballot initiative on November 2, 2010 that will help curb the over-growth and devastation of our State by allowing the residents to vote on Comprehensive Plan land-use changes)
What Dr. Rosen has to say about the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reporting:"CAFR funds indeed are interesting. Here is how you create a deficit budget.
Say the county or whatever owns a water treatment plant and it generates $40,000 revenue a year. Now the County decides it will need a much bigger plant in ten years. (In Lake Worth’s case, think of our Reverse Osmosis System) So, off they go to cost it out. When they figure out the cost, what do they do? Simple...they add it to the CAFR list as a liability which creates debt on the books. Now, the $40,000 profit is credited to the account for the new water plant, however to get it paid for on whatever payment schedule they cook up, you need $70,000 instead of $40,000 so you have created an instant fantasy deficit of $30,000.
Get the drift? This is the answer to your question of why we are always having budget shortfalls. It's all accounting tricks to manipulate the public into thinking we really have deficits when all along it’s a scam to convince us we need to ante up more tax dollars or police and firemen will be laid off. You couple it with a scare tactic like that and there you go.
No matter how much we pay in taxes, it will never be enough.
Welcome to politico-accounting 101!”
Dr. Rosen speaks more on CAFR...
Part II coming Monday
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