Services for the 21st Century Committee-of-the-Whole
Interim Recommendations to the El Cerrito City Council
June 10, 1998
At our 6/10/98 meeting, the CotW received and discussed
the Financial Review Team's recommendations regarding the 1998-99 Proposed
Budget of the City of El Cerrito.
The CotW adopted the following recommendations of the
Financial Review Team Report and hereby submits them to you as interim
recommendations of the CotW:
To improve budget presentation, the City should:
-
Use a layered approach starting with summaries and following
with more detail.
-
Use more footnotes to explain all transactions and Fund Transfers.
-
Distribute all costs to the administrative organization generating
the costs. Example: Workmen's Compensation costs should show up in each
work group such as Police and Fire, not in one lump sum under Administrative.
-
Employee time allocation for various departments should be
made at least once per year (they don't appear to have been changed in
El Cerrito for several years).
At that meeting, the CotW also adopted and hereby submits
to you the following additional interim recommendations:
a. That Council begin conducting quarterly budget reviews
and consider conducting monthly or bimonthly reviews, if possible, and
b. That the details of implementing more and better itemization
in the budget be worked out in negotiations between Staff and the FRT and
CotW.
The CotW anticipates that, from time to time, we will
generate and submit to you additional recommendations for improving the
budget and financial review processes used by the City in response to our
ongoing information gathering and analysis efforts.
Submitted on behalf of the CotW by:
Barbara Chan, Anne Delehunt, Al Miller and Thom Stark,
co-Chairs
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