Because there are a few who are dissing the recent award received by our City for its comprehensive annual financial report and the recognition received from the GFOA and saying all you have to do is pay a fee and get a certificate of achievement, the following is the answer from the Government Finance Officers Association:
From: John Fishbein
To: lynn113@comcast.net
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2011 5:55 PM
Subject: City of Lake Worth, Florida
Not every organization receives an award when they submit their budget. On GFOA's website, under Awards programs -you can see a list of all of the winners and the criteria that we use to judge.
John
From: Lynn Anderson
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2011 2:06 PM
To: budgetawards@gfoa.org
Subject: City of Lake Worth, Florida
To Whom it May Concern:
The City of Lake Worth recently received a certificate of achievement from your organization. I am wondering about this designation--
1. Do you automatically receive it when you pay a fee? or
2. Does the city budget actually get scrutinized and go through a process of standards set by your organization before a city can receive the recognition?
Understanding that there is a cost to go over a budget, what constitutes receiving a GFOA certificate?
Thanks for your time.
What about the assertion that the figures submitted are VERY different than the ones that we are using for our "un-awarded" budget?
ReplyDeleteThe award seems to show the "form" of the budget is what we would expect when we have such a high dollar office of accounting and budget?
Doesn't it seem at least a little bizarre that we can receive an award for a budget that has undergone at least two revisions, lots of staff lay-offs, drawn several lawsuits, and has our employees picketing outside every commission meeting?
While Rome is burning....the BCE is patting Stanton on the back. Whith awards being given for such a fine job, sure we should ignore our Charter that requires an internal auditor that could also look over the budget and give the "other" side of the story to her bosses. But NO... we get to hold up an award that cost us taxpayers $550 -$1000 to show how much we don't need an internal auditor.
If we truly don't need an IA, then put it on the ballot to change the Charter. Let's see how far that would go. Like amendment 4, we will have gotten it wrong because we are stupid. Right?
Amendments to Budgets are not an anomaly to Lake Worth--they happen all of the time--even to the Feds.
ReplyDeleteAn IA I agree with. Have Maxwell ask another question--perhaps they will move forward with that request just like the fireworks.
I have to wonder why YOU personally are so negative all of the time. You seem to relish in finding or inventing fault.
To bring up Amendment 4 just proves that you HAVE NO CLUE about what happened there. And to use your expression, "only in Lake Worth."