City of Puyallup receives Distinguished Budget Award

The city of Puyallup was recently awarded the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award by the Government Finance Officers Association for the sixth year in a row.

The award is open to all cities and counties in the U.S. and Canada for their 2015 budgets, and is the highest recognition in government budgeting.

“It’s a daunting process,” Cliff Craig, the city’s finance director, said. “We had to fill out an application and submit it to the GFOA, who then sent it to three independent reviewers. The rating criteria is quite extensive.”

The guidelines for the reviewers looks at how well the budget serves as a policy document, financial plan, operations guide and as a communications device.

According to John Fishbein, senior program manager at the GFOA, of all the cities and counties in the U.S. and Canada, only a little more than 1,500 cities or counties have received the award.

“It’s not the most common,” he said.

The GFOA’s program encourages and assists state and local governments to prepare high-quality budget documents.

“The GFOA has a consistent set of standards,” Fishbein said. “This award is similar to getting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”

Each year while assembling the budget, Craig says the city’s goal is to use it to tell a story of where the city has been and where it is going.

“I don’t care if we get recognized or not, it’s just us doing our job,” he said. “Preparing a high-quality budget document begins with the city council’s establishment of strategic goals and priorities. From there, the city manager determines how to best administer these.”

This story was originally published June 29, 2016 at 11:13 AM with the headline "City of Puyallup receives Distinguished Budget Award."