The City of Whitewater earned its first Government Finance Officers Association Distinguished Budget presentation award for its 2018 budget.
The award represents a significant achievement reflecting the commitment of city staff to utilize best practices within governmental budgeting, according to a new release.
In order to receive the budget award, the city needed to satisfy nationally recognized guidelines for effective budget presentation. These guidelines are designed to assess how well an entity’s budget serves as a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide and a communications device.
Budget documents must be rated as “proficient” in all four categories and in 14 mandatory criteria within those categories to receive the award.
A certificate of recognition is presented to the individuals or department designated as being primarily responsible for having achieved the award. This has been presented to City Manager Cameron Clapper, Finance Director Steve Hatton and comptroller Karen Dieter.
“We are proud to have received this award,” Hatton said in the news release. “This was the first year the City of Whitewater submitted a budget to the GFOA award program. We developed a number of enhancements to our 2018 budget document with this program in mind. Each member of our staff played an important role in compiling and submitting information for us to create a complete and digestible document.
“We already have begun the 2019 budget process and are implementing several suggestions received through the GFOA program to further improve next year’s document.”
One purpose for submitting a governmental budget to this awards program is to benchmark efforts to improve the quality of local budgeting against established best practices.
Over 1,000 municipalities were awarded the Distinguished Budget presentation award across the nation for the 2017 budget year, 22 of them in Wisconsin.
