Four awards in a row for Wasilla

JOEL DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

WASILLA - For the fourth year in a row, the city of Wasilla's finance department was awarded the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award by the Government Finance Association of the United States and Canada.

GFOA is a nonprofit professional association, serving 14,000 government finance professionals throughout North America. The award is the only national awards program in governmental budgeting. Each year a panel of finance officers from around the country reviews thousands of government budgets to determine whether they meet roughly 60 criteria gauging the quality of the budget reports.

In fiscal year 2003, only one of four cities in Alaska and one of 597 cities nationally received this prestigious award, said Wasilla Mayor Dianne M. Keller. Keller praised the finance department, and especially its director, Ted Leonard, for the high standards the department has set in order to meet the nationally recognized guidelines for effective budget presentations.

The guidelines are designed to measure how well a government budget serves as a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide and a communications device.

"It's more a reflection on how the city is doing to ensure open government," Leonard said. "We try to give a document that citizens can use and easily read."

Leonard said his department tries to present a document with pie charts and graphs so the average person can read and understand city expenditures, both past and present. The city budget for fiscal year 2005 is now available at the city of Wasilla Web site, www.cityofwasilla.com. Hard copies can be picked up at Wasilla City Hall in the finance department.

"No one wants to just read a bunch of numbers," he said.

Each year, Leonard said there's a bit of pressure on the department to win the award again.

"It's a bar that's been set and we want to ensure that we keep meeting the criteria," he said.

Contact Joel Davidson at joel.davidson@frontiersman.com.