Public Sector Accounting Board Reports referenced in Making Municipal Finance Fun episode
Nathan submitted an ask for help form:
I just listened to the Making Municipal FInance Fun episode of the Strongtowns podcast. I was quite struck by the story about the three recommended metrics from the Public Sector Accounting Board that the city of Winnipeg actually applied to their financial statements for three years. I am curious if those financial statements are still available and where I might find them. Maybe that's a question for the podcast guest Michel Durand-Wood
Comments
1 comment
I emailed Michel Durand-Wood and he responded:
The City of Winnipeg's financial statements going back to 2001 are available on their website: https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/finance/documents_page.stm#10
They published a few of the PSAB's recommended metrics along with explanatory discussion in 2009 (pg 35), 2010 (pg 36), 2011 (pg 38) and 2012 (pg 39). They were trending in the wrong direction, and they disappeared from the Annual report starting in 2013. Although technically, they didn't totally disappear, they just buried them in the notes, renamed the header to the innocuous (but technically still accurate) "Government-specific indicators" devoid of all discussion and context (so unless you know what they are, you wouldn't know what you're looking at).
I've pulled the numbers out of all the statements since 2005 and ran the metrics on them myself. See attached. I've also helped a few others do this for their city, so I've got some other cities too. This'll be the focal point of the Local Motive session next week.
Please sign in to leave a comment.