Kelowna budget carryover requests approved

http://www.kelowna.ca/iNews/scripts/nws002.cfm?News_ID=2477
More than $94.2 million in operating and capital carryover expenditures will be added to the City of Kelowna 2011 budget. The funds are targeted at a number of multi-year projects set for completion in 2011, including the $60-million upgrade to the city’s wastewater treatment plant and the $6.9-million expansion of the Kelowna Family Y. The carryover projects have no additional taxation demand. “Details of the budgeting process can be found www.kelowna.ca,” said financial planning manager Angie Thiessen.  “We’ve taken further steps to ensure residents and ratepayers have easy access to budget documents and the details of our financial policies.”  In December, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy named Kelowna, along with Port Coquitlam, as Canada’s most transparent city when reporting on finances.  The Frontier Centre has been compiling its Local Government Performance Index, which compares the financial statistics of Canada’s largest municipalities, since 2007.  The adoption of the final budget is set for May 2, when the final tax rate will be set.  Council approved a provisional tax increase at 2.05 per cent during budget deliberation last December.
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Municipality Transparency Index  Voters can’t survive without the services provided by municipalities, and neither can they source these services from a competitor, unless they move cities. For this reason, it is essential that voters are informed by the highest level of reporting on the finances and the quality of services provided by municipalities. Informed voter pressure is a substitute for the discipline of competition faced by most other organisations. This section applies eleven basic tests to the annual reports of municipalities.
Several assumptions are applied:  The tests should be simple enough for the lay person to understand. It is assumed that the annual reports are sound from an accounting point of view, and the emphasis is on the generosity of detail provided. The tests are only applied to the Annual Report, which should contain the Audited Financial Statements. Some municipalities may claim that some of the tests are passed if subsidiary documents or information available on their websites in taken into consideration. However, important information should be integrated into a single document reporting on financial and performance matters.

Vernon Transparency		Score	Region Av.
Timeliness of audit opinion		3	2.7
Receipt of accounting award		0	0.7
Additional commentary and statistics		0	1.9
Capital assets reported		8	8.0
Capital assets depreciated/funded		2	2.2
Expenditures by object reported		1	1.0
Goods/contracted services separate		1	0.6
Operating/Capital Split (object)		1	1.0
Operating/Capital Split (function)		2	0.4
Expenditure line items defined		0	1.7
Historical trend statistics given		0	1.2
Total		18	21.3

Kelowna Transparency		Score	Region Av.
Timeliness of audit opinion		2	2.7
Receipt of accounting award		2	0.7
Additional commentary and statistics		3	1.9
Capital assets reported		8	8.0
Capital assets depreciated/funded		4	2.2
Expenditures by object reported		1	1.0
Goods/contracted services separate		1	0.6
Operating/Capital Split (object)		1	1.0
Operating/Capital Split (function)		2	0.4
Expenditure line items defined		2	1.7
Historical trend statistics given		2	1.2
Total		28	21.3