University of Wisconsin - Extension

Contact: Alan Probst, 608-262-5103, alan.probst@ces.uwex.edu

Madison, Wis.—Based on his own experiences as a city manager and village administrator, Alan Probst saw the need for an easy-to-use guide to financial management for local elected officials.

"Financial issues aren’t always clear cut," says Probst, a local government specialist with the University of Wisconsin-Extension. "Sometimes it’s a matter of knowing what funds can be used to cover expenses and what funds are restricted. But you can get into trouble if it’s done wrong."

Probst views UW-Extension’s community resource development educators as the first line of defense for local officials looking to get a handle on economic issues. "We get requests from county CRD educators often about good ways to respond to local government officials," he says.

Probst and his colleagues at the Local Government Center developed a series of resources, including PowerPoint presentations, on a new financial management web site at http://lgc.uwex.edu/Finance/FinMgmt.html

The new site gives CRD educators a tool to guide officials on the essential building blocks of sound government financing and budgeting. "For example, when a village board says ‘we want to look at impact fees,’ or a county official says ‘I don’t understand audits,’ the CRD educator can say ‘We can help you’ and offer to give a quick presentation on the topic," Probst says. The information on the site is intended to be easy to understand and easy to present.

Topics covered include:

• Basics of Local Government Financial Management
• Local Government Budgets
• Using Net Present Value to Evaluate the Value of Money Over Time
• Impact Fees
• Debt Management
• An Introduction to Capital Planning
• Performance Measurement and Performance Based Budgeting

Future plans call for the site to include material on benchmarking, performance/outcome based budgeting, audits, cost/benefit analysis, risk management and a variety of other subjects that underpin good local government financial management.