Apple Valley: The Town of Apple Valley is no stranger to receiving praise for its accounting practices. With several Certificates of Achievement on its walls, the Town has been consistently ranked in the top 2% nationally for its accounting and financial reporting practices.
The Town can now add more accolades to its list of accomplishments as it has earned the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada.
“This award reaffirms staff’s dedication to creating and improving transparency in the budget process,” said Assistant Town Manager Marc Puckett. “Ultimately it is about telling a story about how we connect the budget to our priorities and results to improve accountability to those we serve.”
This award represents a significant achievement and reflects the commitment of the Town and its staff to meet the highest principles of governmental budgeting. In order to receive the award, the Town had to satisfy nationally recognized guidelines for effective budget presentation.
The guidelines are designed to assess how well an entity’s budget serves as a policy document, financial plan, an operations guide and a communications device; and must be rated “proficient” in 14 categories within each of those areas.
The Government Finance Officers Association is a nonprofit professional association serving approximately 17,800 government finance professionals throughout North America. THE GFOA’s Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards Program is the only national awards program in governmental budgeting. There are approximately 87,900 governmental units in the United States and 2,900 in Canada. Of those 90,800, approximately 1,340 or 1.47% received the award.
