City of Abbotsford
UBCM Awards Submission 2005
Best Practices, Annual Reporting
Project Report
Introduction
The City of Abbotsford’s 2004 Annual Report and 2005 Community Update (Update) are both award-winning documents. The annual report has received the Government Finance Officers’ Association’s (GFOA) financial reporting award for each of the last seven years. The Community Update also received the GFOA’s popular reporting award in 2004.
The GFOA Canadian Award for Financial Reporting recognizes high-quality financial reports that are easily readable, efficiently organized, and clearly communicate the government’s financial picture. The Popular Report award recognizes conformance with the highest standards for preparation of reports in the areas of creativity, presentation, understandability and reader appeal. We continue to improve both reports so they not only meet these award criteria, but set a standard of their own.
Creating Maximum Awareness
The Update complements the Annual Report. Because the average citizen is unlikely to seek out and read the Annual Report, the City distributes its Update to all property owners with the annual tax notices. The Update contains condensed information from the Annual Report including the consolidated financial activities for the previous year and highlights of capital projects, community events, and City services that are of interest to residents. Of particular interest is a section that translates tax information into a monthly equivalent value that residents pay for each of the City’s major services.
The Update communicates to a much broader audience than the Annual Report because of its conciseness, appealing layout, and interesting and relevant content. The timing of the distribution is also ideal, as it contacts potential readers when they are most likely to be concerned about City finances and operations--tax time.The Update supports the Annual Report by referencing thatreport and pointingthose interested in reading it to the City’s website.Printing the Update costs just over 10 cents per person for the 45,000 property owners in the city.The comprehensive annual report is available in pdf format on the website.
Improving Public Accountability
Content
The Update and the comprehensive Annual Report provide more than just the audited consolidated financial results of the City. Financial information also includes activities and position of each of the major funds, plus details of the various categories and programs contained in the general fund.
Ten years of financial statistics reveal fund balances, expenditures by function and object, sources of revenue, and various debt, property assessment, and taxation information including permissive tax exemptions. Non-financial statistics describe the organization’s employment levels, infrastructure inventories, airport operations, and community demographics.
Narrative sections report on City services, organizational structure, and highlights from operations during the previous year. Community goals are also reported, which describe in broad terms the major areas of emphasis set for the city by Mayor and Council. Each goal has related objectives, which describe specific, measurable outcomes that will be used to assess the city’s progress on each of the goals.
Collectively, this content provides readers with information to make informed judgments and decisions concerning the operations and financial health of the city. It goes beyond legislated requirements to provide a more holistic understanding of where the city is now, and where it has come from, and where it is headed.
Presentation
Both the Update and the Annual Report contain numerous graphs and charts in order to clearly communicate numerical information. The reports use standardized headers, footers, and character styles, easy-to-read clutter-free layouts, and interesting pictures. A detailed table of contents in the Annual Report makes its various topics easy to locate.
Summary
Together, the Update and Annual Report communicate to a broad audience, in a cost-effective manner, the city’s operations in financial and non-financial terms. It improves accountability by clearly communicating past performance and measurable objectives for the future. The reports go beyond making information available by simply posting it to a website. Instead, the documentsget information out to the public with an appealing presentation at a time when they are most likely to be open to reading it.
City of Abbotsford, Best Practices Annual Reporting1