2010-07-30 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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our vendors. Our departments also enter their timesheets, which are also reviewed and to make sure they are in compliance with the bargaining unit contracts. We pay twice a thth month on the 15 and the end of the month. You receive your current salary on the 15 and the end of the month, and then your overtime from one pay period previously. Today is payday for us. It would be difficult for us to pay the overtime that they just worked yesterday and let’s say today. So, that overtime that they worked from July 16 th to July 31 will be paid with their August 15 check. We do have eight bargaining units. Accounts Division is really the division within Finance that makes all the payments. They do the accounts payable checks, they do the payroll checks as well as all the record keeping and accounting. We also have the Treasury Division. That’s basically the division within Finance that all the money flows into. All the deposits are made there. The investments are taken care of there as well as the borrowing. The Treasurer is also very involved in the borrowing process and issuing bonds. We also review contracts for certification of funds. A recent thing is also the Expenditure Review Committee given that budgets are much tighter than they used to be. If you want to go, any out-of-state travel request, equipment purchases, professional services contracts over $25,000 that are not related to a construction project, and then all personnel request must come to this committee and be approved before they can go out and spend, just to make sure it’s well justified and needed, and so sometimes those things will be denied. Even after this Expenditure Review Committee reviews all the personnel requests, they still go to the Mayor and the Mayor must approve it before a department can hire someone. So, just as a way to scrutinize even closer the expenditures being made. Our CAFR is not a small document. With the addition of Gaspy 34, the financial statements are actually in kind of two pieces now. One is our Fund Financial Statements which is through government and County fund-by-fund, more on a budgetary basis, although there are definitely some accruals made. And there’s now, what’s called a government wide set of financial statements. This is to put it on a full accrual basis so that you can, it’s more comparable to for-profit business. You’re better able to tell if you’re making money or not. And in government, we try not to make money. Basically, on page 13, is the management’s discussion and analysis that goes along with the financial statements that you can peruse at your leisure. But at least it also explains some of the increases and decreases that happened during the year. The actual financial statements themselves start on page 26. The first two pages are the statement net assets. Some of you are probably more familiar with the terminology balance sheet. And that’s what this is. We list all of our assets including monetary assets, all our capital assets, infrastructure, as well as our liabilities, both current and long term. Our net assets is what some people refer to as fund balance, but now we have newer language. So, for governmental – there’s two columns primarily – governmental activities, which is the basic operations of the County, as well as business type activities. And those are our proprietary funds that are meant to be more business like operations. We only have two and they both are housing projects – Kulaimano and Ouli Housing. So, it’s a relatively small portion of our operations. But governmental activities would be our General Fund which basically funds each of our basic 7