To help make its annual financial report more accessible, the city of Grand Rapids released a guide that summarizes its recent finances.
The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) and the Citizen’s Guide to the City’s Finances for fiscal year 2022 have been published online and were featured in a recent committee of the whole meeting. During a presentation, City Comptroller Max Frantz introduced the latest citizen’s guide — an easy-to-read, summarized version of the ACFR.
The guide includes information such as a one-page summary of the city’s finances, information on the city’s revenues and expenses, top vendors paid, tax abatement programs and a debt summary, plus helpful infographics that illustrate the information.
“The citizen’s guide represents a continuation of our commitment toward governmental excellence and continuous improvement of our reporting to the public to help simplify sometimes complex subject matters,” Frantz said. “The citizen’s guide aims to present a concise and straightforward overview of key financial topics for individuals to help those interested to learn more about their government’s finances.”
In accordance with the U.S. Governmental Accounting Standards Board accounting requirements, the city’s ACFR includes an audit report plus financial information, statements, schedules and statistics.
The newest citizen’s guide outlines the city’s financial activity from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, or FY2022. Key details include the city’s reported revenues of $428.3 million from primary sources such as income taxes, property taxes, operating grants and charges for services (water, sewage and parking).
The city’s expenses for FY2022 were $360.2 million, a decrease by 5.1% compared to 2021 expenses. This brought a positive increase in net position, or the amount by which the city’s revenues exceeded its expenses during the fiscal year, by $68.1 million.
As far as debt obligations, the city issued $113.5 million of new debt and paid $121.6 million during the fiscal year, leading to an overall net decrease of $8.1 million (1.6%) in debt obligations.
Additional financial obligations, such as pensions and other post-employment benefits, totaled $174.5 million.
In terms of vendor payments, the citizen’s guide outlines organizations that received aggregate payments exceeding $1 million during FY2022. Kamminga & Roodvoets Inc., a Grand Rapids-based excavating contractor, was the top recipient of city funds and received $11.2 million for its road and underground utility work at Market Avenue and Fulton Street.
Thirty-five other organizations — including Consumers Energy, Community Rebuilders, Republic Services and the Grand Rapids-Kent County Convention/Arena Authority — received more than $1 million in payments from the city.
The citizen’s guide also highlights the city’s unassigned general fund balance of $68.2 million and its AA rating from the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s, which is one rating below the highest credit rating of AAA.
“Transparency is achieved through publishing financial statements; however, raising the number of those in the community who are engaged and finding meaningful information in these reports requires continuous improvement, efforts and innovation on our behalf,” Frantz said. “We hope that the public finds the citizen’s guide to be a useful and intuitive resource on the government’s financial activity in fiscal year 2022.”
The complete citizen’s guide is available here.
