CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP AGENDA PACKET

CITY OF PLEASANTON, CALIFORNIA 16 | eidebailly.com RECOMMENDATIONS Although our observations are split into two sections – the financial forecast observations and the financial management practices observations, our recommendations detailed in the table below are comprehensive and relate to both categories of observations. We acknowledge that City staff are actively addressing certain of our recommendations and that others require a phased approach to implementation given limited staff resources. NO. RECOMMENDATION DISCUSSION 1 The City’s financial forecast should be updated to reflect, as appropriate, our observations. The City has taken critical steps toward comprehensive long-term financial planning and financial management. In the year ahead, focused attention on the observations included in this report relative to the forecast will help to facilitate an even more accurate and beneficial forecast that can continue to inform the City’s discussion about future budgetary decisions. In particular, modeling additional scenarios in the financial forecast that reflect changes to the City’s key revenues and flat or reduced expenditures would increase the understanding of these variables by stakeholders and provide additional context for future budgetary decision-making. 2 The City should revise its approach to presenting complex financial information to employ compelling presentations, succinct staff reports, and appropriate supporting documentation to enhance the understandability and usability of information provided to the City Council and the public. For agencies that are projecting structural deficits, it can be challenging for stakeholders less intimately familiar with the figures to differentiate between the components of the City’s budget that are controllable or fixed, recurring or one-time, and discretionary or mandatory. To improve budget communication, it is essential to present budget information concisely and to focus on key issues for consideration. Further, simplifying the presentation and highlighting key trends will make it easier for all stakeholders, including those without a financial background, to grasp the essential information and trust in the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the City’s budget and financial forecast. We recommend that the City revise its communication approach to address these concerns and provide additional focused education to stakeholders to enhance their foundational knowledge. 3 The City should develop a multi-year plan to prioritize and complete the remaining elements of its plan to catalog and eventually address its long-term funding needs. The City is concurrently working on a series of critical infrastructure assessments and funding plans. It is important to prioritize and address the most pressing issues first. Immediate concerns, such as evaluating and addressing any short-term deficit should be reviewed first. Other issues such as long-term pension and infrastructure funding, interfund subsidies, and enterprise funds rates and infrastructure funding should be regularly and incrementally addressed as staff resources permit. We recommend that the City develop a written multi-year financial management work plan to tackle these important issues so that an appropriate pace of progress is maintained within the bandwidth of the staff resources that are available. Page 25 of 33