2010-07-30 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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department – Police, Fire, Finance, Corporation Counsel, Planning, Prosecuting Attorney, Mass Transit, Parks and Recreation, Public Works – part of Public Works Administration, as well as the Environmental Management Administrative Offices. We also have several special revenue funds like the Highway Fund, which is funded by fuel tax. We account for that separately so that we can track that fuel tax and where it’s going. Sewer fund is another special revenue fund that’s tracked separately and is currently self sufficient. Their revenues aren’t really enough to cover the operations. Then we also have Solid Waste Fund, which is all the transfer stations, landfill, vehicle disposal fund, golf course fund, as well as our housing fund.Those are the major funds. There’s actually several more. But those all get rolled up into governmental activities fund. The next two pages are statement of activities which is more like an income statement. It breaks it up into functions or programs. In our governmental activities we have general government, public safety, highways and streets, health, education and welfare, which would be both housing and aging type of programs, parks and recreation, sanitation and interest on a long term debt which would be our bonds. The first column is expenses. Our revenues are actually broken up into three types. What we collect from charges for services, what we collect for operating grants and contributions as well as capital balance and contributions. At that level, we have a large negative. If you look over to the right and that expense, because way at the bottom are the general revenues which are primarily our property taxes that we receive as revenue as well as some public service company taxes. The utilities, our telephone companies, pay that instead of property taxes. We also have some franchise taxes and fuel taxes as well as some general grants primarily on the TAT, Transient Accommodation Tax that we get from the state. Any investment earnings are miscellaneous revenue. So for last fiscal year, FY-09, the change in assets was just about $12 million. This format also includes depreciation and other non-cash expenditures that were going out. The Department of Water Supply is a semi-autonomous department from the County, and so they’re considered a component unit within our financial statement. So, Water is just listed as a component unit on the side. Next page on page 30, is the balance sheet. This is more of the governmental accounting level so there is no depreciation included there. There’s also a reconciliation to get you between the components. Pages 32 and 33 are more of the typical income statement people are used to seeing. On page 36 is where you get a feel for actually what the original budget was, final budget and our actual expenses and any variances for the General Fund. So that just gives you an idea of how our department might have at the end of the year last year. After that our proprietary fund statements as well as the trust fund statements. Trust funds are those funds that we hold on behalf of others. One example would be the state motor vehicle weight tax. We collect all the vehicle registration fees. Part of that is for the state. 8