Budgets

INTRODUCTION

The annual budget serves as a guide for the Town of Shady Shores to provide services, facilities and amenities to its residents. The budget document in intended to give a comprehensive view of funding for the day-to-day operations, capital improvements, and reserve funds for the Town of Shady Shores. Exependitures are organized by department to give the public a clear understanding of how resources are allocated. Conservative fiscal management has allowed the Town to achieve a significant reserve fund and provide flexibility on budgetary issues. Shady Shores continues to balance revenues and expenditures, maintain or enhance services and remains debt free. The Annual Budget provides four main functions for the Town:

Policy Document – The budget should serve as a policy document for the Board of Directors and management to convey how the organization will operate.
Financial Plan – The budget should serve as a financial plan describing all sources and uses of funding, including summaries of revenues and expenditures for multiple years, and changes in fund balances.
Operations Guide – The budget should serve as an operations guide to the departments by identifying the resources to be provided and the objectives to be met.
Communications Device – The budget should serve as a communications device to convey essential information to the diverse groups who use the budget information – the public, elected and appointed officials, bond rating agencies, and investors.

BUDGET CYCLE

During the first quarter of the year, staff members reviewed the current budget and previous years budgets in order to prepare this budget. Beginning in March, staff conducted meetings with employees involved in budget preparation, at which time applicable budget materials and instructions were distributed. The budget calendar was communicated, with deadlines for submission of personnel requests, capital projects, operating expenditures. Legal requirements, contractual obligations, board policies and funding decisions, the Town strategic plan, provided guidelines for budget preparation. Additionally, comments and directives communicated at the Town Council Budget Work sessions held in June and July as well as the public hearings were reviewed and included.

The Salaries and Benefits Budget was developed using salary surveys from similar towns and a review of job performance; years of service as well as cost of living increases.