Budget

My meeting with the two newly elected officials would begin by congratulating them on their new positions and informing them of the honor that has been bestowed upon them as my new city council members. I would then move into a discussion on the concept of social equity and inform them of their moral obligations as city council member to be fair, honest and equal. I would then spend time discussing Rawl's Theory of Justice and emphasis their use of his Veil of Ignorance when discussing the City's affairs, i.e. budgeting, tax rates and enacting ordinances. The meeting would then shift to a discussion on where the city's budget was when I was appointed City Manager and my vision of the purpose of a budget.

Purpose of the Budget

Government agencies are often thought of as an operation of collecting taxes, buying resources, using resources and performing tasks. And in its most broadest form, that is a government organization. However, those tasks must be funded and they are funded through a budget. The purpose of a budget is to provide an instrument for determining what services the government will provide and how each service will be funded. The budget provides the government and its taxpayers the means to identify these operating costs for the given year. The budget should be viewed less of a forecast of spending and more of a representation of the costs each organization is going to accrue from providing their public services. Of course, the budget does more than provide monetary transactions. The following are functions of a budget that are often overlooked but serve as a major purposes of creating a budget.

Management Tool. Every activity the government performs is funded through the budget. This allows managers to assemble th...

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...is then broken down further to individual line item accounts. In most circumstances, a the budget will also include its three prior years budget allocations. This assists in transparency for it shows the public specifically what line items are being reduced or increased.

Budget Philosophy

My meeting with the new council members would conclude with a discuss of my budgets philosophy. That philosophy is a commitment of providing the best quality of service to the residence of the city at their least possible cost. Public employees owe it to their tax paying citizens to provide the best service available for it is the citizens who make their work possible. I would end the meeting with asking the council members how long they believe a private company would stay in business if they provided an inferior product and asked them if that is what they want from their city.