Cotati City Council
Agenda Staff Report
Item type: REGULAR AGENDA (ACTION)
To: City Council/Successor Agency to the Former Cotati Community Redevelopment Agency
Subject: Receive and File the Fiscal Year 2021/22 Popular Annual Financial Report (PAFR).
Date: January 10, 2023
Written by: Angela Courter, Director of Administrative Services Recommendation
It is recommended that the City Council receive and file the Fiscal Year 2021/22 Popular Annual Financial Report (PAFR).
Background
The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) established the Popular Annual Financial Reporting Awards Program (PAFR Awards Program) in 1991 to encourage and assist state and local governments to extract information from their Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) to produce high quality popular annual financial reports specifically designed to be readily accessible and easily understandable to the general public and other interested parties without a background in public finance and then to recognize individual governments that are successful in achieving that goal.
The Popular Annual Financial Report (PAFR) for the City of Cotati provides a snapshot of financial data and City specific information as was included within the audited Annual ACFR. It highlights the topics of most frequent interest including; City overview including history, vital statistics, and resources available to the public; financial highlights including details on comparative revenues, expenses, net position fund balance; and well as strategic goals and accomplishments made during the year.
To date, the City has been awarded four consecutive annual PAFR and ACFR awards by independent reviewers as part of the GFOA awards program.
Analysis/Discussion
The purpose of the PAFR is to increase awareness throughout the community of the City’s finances. The report provides a brief analysis of the City’s revenue sources, where those dollars are spent, and an overview of the City’s financial condition. It is our goal that this report is easy to read and understand.
Though the intent of the PAFR is to provide a basic summary of the financial information, it is a focused subset of the financial information as provided within the audited ACFR. As such, it is noted throughout the report to find the detailed financial reports within the City’s ACFR, which can be viewed at City Hall or on the City’s website at cotaticity.org. The ACFR is the complete, independently audited financial presentation, prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
Consistent with the prior year, the Administrative Services Department will provide the PAFR both in physical documents, available at City Hall, the Police Department, and the Chamber of Commerce, as well as digital copies available on the City Website. With the next City newsletter, we will also provide a notice to the public about the availability of both the PAFR as well as the ACFR online and at City Hall.
Financial Considerations
No financial considerations are applicable to the filing of the Popular Annual Financial Report. This report is a summarization of the financial information provided within the audited ACFR which is available for review online or at City Hall.
Environmental Issues
The creation of a Popular Annual Financial Reporting document is not a project under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), per the definition of a project identified in Section 15378 of CEQA in that there will be no direct, or reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment.
Attachments:
Popular Annual Financial Report to the Community (PAFR) 2021-22 (PDF) Annual Financial Report to the Community 2021/22 Presentation (PDF)