Fiscally Ready Communities Program

This training will provide best practices for local governments' fiscal health including budgeting, long-term planning, dealing with uncertainty, and financial policies and procedures.

This session will cover the basics of a Capital Improvement Program (CIP), best practices, and give participants a chance to share techniques that have worked for their community. Additionally, the training will assist both elected and appointed local officials in outlining your policies and procedures for capital asset management and planning. This will ensure that your local government is being proactive, while discussing the interconnectivity of many local government requirements.

This training discusses the fundamental best practices for fiscal and operational planning and provided an overview of best practices in financial policies and good governance. Training topics included budgets, cash controls, debt, grants, internal controls, purchasing policies, and receipting. Treasury also provides additional detailed guides with recommended and required policies.

The Fiscally Ready Communities program was created to assist communities who want to establish, measure, and maintain policies to increase operational and financial effectiveness and safeguards. The Fiscally Ready Communities Best Practices guide was created as a tool to discuss the recommended process and provide examples. Every community is unique, so the process and documentation should reflect the different needs and capacities of the community.

This program focuses on implementing financial best practices, measuring fiscal health, and local government financial management fundamentals. It will include material on reconciling a bank account, how to read and interpret governmental financial statements, audit prep umbrella, how to complete and file an F65 Report, remitting taxes timely, and how to craft an appropriate and effective audit finding Corrective Action Plan. Participants will also receive resources to support best practice implementation and assess their local unit fiscal health.

This training will include a deep dive into internal controls. It will cover what internal controls are, why you need them, how they help your community, how to implement them, and where to start.

Building a culture of fiscal sustainability is essential to local government fiscal health. Well-thought-out policies on fees, fines, purchasing, and receipting lead to clear rules and fair treatment, which are essential pillars to that culture of fiscal sustainability. This webinar will include a deep dive into best practices related to fees, fines, purchasing, receipting, and more. It will cover what they are, why such policies are necessary, how they contribute to local fiscal health, and how to get started on implementation.