City of Plant City’s Finance Department Earns Budget Badge of Honor

City of Plant City’s Finance Department Earns Budget Badge of Honor

Chief Money Officer Diane Reichard and her staff get the job done hard to keep the city’s funds well balanced.

For the seventh consecutive 12 months, the Metropolis of Plant City’s Finance Division has received prime honors for its finances. The business office has been awarded the Distinguished Price range Presentation Award for its fiscal 12 months 2022-2023 spending plan from the Govt Finance Officers Affiliation (GFOA), which performs to advance excellence in federal government finance. It was also awarded the Certification of Achievement for Excellence in Economic Reporting for it once-a-year detailed fiscal report for the fiscal 12 months finished Sept., 30, 2021.

In purchase to obtain the prestigious award, the town has to fulfill nationally regarded pointers for helpful spending plan presentation. Funds review recommendations are created to assess how very well the funds document serves as: 1) a policy doc, 2) a economic program, 3) an operations information and 4) a communications guidebook.

“Financial management is an necessary component of city services,” stated Town Manager Monthly bill McDaniel. “We’re taking care of tens of tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer funds and we have to maintain integrity of those people units.”

The vital money strategist for the city’s $96.4 million finances is Chief Economical Officer (CFO) Diane Reichard, a licensed public accountant who gained a Master’s diploma in Accounting from College of South Florida. She’s also a Qualified Federal government Finance Officer (CGFO) and Certified Community Finance Officer(CPFO).

Reichard has labored for various metropolis governments since her career commenced in 1986, like Leesburg, Ocala, Temple Terrace and Plant Metropolis. “I’ve usually worked for metropolitan areas so coming to Plant Town 7 and a half decades back was a pure in good shape,” claimed Reichard.

She and her personnel work with the Metropolis Manager to forecast the revenues the city will obtain and the expenses the city will incur every fiscal 12 months. The resulting formal doc is regarded as the Municipal Budget and serves as a strategy for how the cash that comes into the Metropolis of Plant Metropolis will be used to work and sustain the metropolis.

“It’s often complicated due to the fact there’s usually more needs than funds,” she said. “We can believe of 101 matters we’d like to do but we have to be reasonable about what we can complete in a fiscal calendar year.”

Often unanticipated expenses require notice right after the budget’s been accredited. At Monday’s city commission conference, they adopted an modification to this fiscal year’s Money Advancement Spending plan to ideal money for Drinking water Therapy Plant 5. The Procurement Section released Invitation to Bid for the project on Sept. 14, 2022. Five bids have been gained with the cheapest bid, from KAT Construction, totaling $9.53 million, a greater sum than budgeted, thanks to document inflation and supply chain difficulties. Even while the Town had been environment funding apart considering that 2012 to pay back for the project, the overall saved for the undertaking was $6.545 million. Doing the job with McDaniel, Reichard designed spending budget changes to make the venture financially feasible.

“We’re happy she’s on our staff and understands how these monies can be moved from a person bucket to the upcoming to consider treatment of speedy requires,” stated McDaniel.

Reichard is certainly an expert at scheduling, organizing and directing budgeting, accounting, auditing and economical reporting functions. “Nobody receives as psyched as I do when it comes to dollars,” she joked. All kidding apart, she reported the City is in good economic form.

Town of Plant City’s spending plan can be considered at www.plantcitygov.com/finance.