Saturday, July 27, 2024
SPRINGTOWN — The city of Springtown reached an accomplishment that, to the best of its city administrator’s knowledge, it hasn’t attained before.
The Government Finance Officers Association awarded Springtown a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the city’s annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2022.
City Administrator David Miller announced this victory with pride at the Jan. 25 city council meeting.
“With the way Doug (Martella, chief executive officer at Go Virtual CFO LLC) has handled the finances, the way our staff has handled the finances, they deserve this award,” Miller said to the council. “I’m excited to announce tonight that we are the recipient of such an award and look forward to doing it again next year.”
After the meeting, Miller said the city won this award in its second year to apply. The first year city staff sought the award, the city did not win because of a formatting error.
Started in 1906, the Government Finance Officers Association aims to “advance excellence in public finance,” according to its website. The association represents public finance officials in the U.S. and Canada and has thousands of members.
Almost 40 years after being founded, the association began its Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Program in 1945 “to encourage and assist state and local governments to go beyond the minimum requirements of generally accepted accounting principles to prepare annual comprehensive financial reports that evidence the spirit of transparency and full disclosure and then to recognize individual governments that succeed in achieving that goal,” according to its website. “The goal of the program is not to assess the financial health of participating governments, but rather to ensure that users of their financial statements have the information they need to do so themselves.”
The association’s website lists 3,580 governments throughout the country that received a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for fiscal year 2022 as well as 389 Texas award winners, including Springtown and Azle.
Miller’s announcement came on the heels of his financial report, in which he told the council about the city’s rising revenue from sales tax and building permits.
“We’ve collected … almost $215,000 in building permits,” Miller said to the council. “To do a year-to-year comparison, last year at this time, we had only collected $56,000.”
After giving details about the city’s general fund, water fund and next debt service payment, Miller concluded that Springtown’s finances are in good shape.
“Overall, our funds are doing extremely well,” he said.
For more information about the most recent financial report, visit the city’s website at cityofspringtown.civicweb.net/document/56157/The%20City%20Administrator%20will%20report%20the%20expendit.pdf?handle=BBDECA116A3C41C3B53C7C07C9AF4C1C online.
