Finance

The City’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) reports the financial transactions of the City and is prepared in accordance with principles generally accepted in the United States of America as promulgated by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB). The City’s CAFR is generally published in the October or November following the close of the fiscal year on June 30th. The CAFR also includes an opinion from a qualified independent accounting firm on the fairness of the City’s financial statement presentation in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

California Government Code section 53891 requires financial transactions of each local agency to be submitted to the State Controller’s Office (SCO) within seven months after the close of the fiscal year.  This state mandated report is referred to as the Cities “Financial Transactions Report” (FTR).  The FTR must contain underlying data from audited financial statements prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.  The purpose of the FTR is to provide financial and statistical data about California cities on as uniform a basis as possible.  Following the completion and publication of the CAFR, the underlying financial transactions included therein are translated into the format specified by the SCO and transmitted by the statutory annual deadline.  Furthermore, California Government Code section 40804 requires each city to publish a summary of its FTR in a form prescribed by the SCO.  As directed by the SCO, the city uses the Summary and Statistics Form of the FTR for this purpose.  The data compiled by the SCO for the FTR is published in an “open data” platform on the SCO’s website at https://bythenumbers.sco.ca.gov for use by the State Legislature, cities, and the public.

The accounting for all of the City’s activities is centralized under the Finance Department, which is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the City’s recorded financial data. The Finance Department, in conjunction with the City’s management, is also responsible for establishing and maintaining an internal control structure designed to ensure that the City’s assets are protected from loss, theft or misuse.