Jill Schramm/MDN City of Minot Finance Department staff shown in City Hall Thursday are, from left, financial specialists Crystal Molina, Jeanny Variste and Jaelee Olson, financial clerk Jamie Grilley, accountant Randi Grabow, financial clerk Haili Duchscherer, accountant Holly Zeece, director David Lakefield, comptroller Jenne Zelinski, accountants Susan Schmidt and Brittany Shefstad and treasurer Melody Shelkey. Zeece and Zelinski hold copies of the award-winning financial report. Not pictured are senior accountant Callie Burns and financial specialist senior Miranda Dutenhafer.

The City of Minot has a long history of achieving high standards in telling its financial story. For 43 consecutive years, it has been honored for its financial reporting.

The city recently upheld its reputation for the 44th year in once again earning the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) of the United States and Canada for its annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year that ended Dec. 31, 2022.

GFOA’s Certificates of Achievement are the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting. The award indicates best practices are being followed when it comes to managing and correctly reporting finances, said Finance Director David Lakefield, whose department is responsible for the recent accolades.

“It’s kind of a quality control,” Lakefield said. “They go through and look at it and grade us. They give us some insight into what we can do better.”

Lakefield said Minot has chosen to participate in the GFOA program, although it isn’t required of cities.

“The GFOA is our governing body that promulgates the rules that we follow, and they’ve developed the criteria of what they want to see in this report. So there’s checklists in here,” Lakefield said. Cities that participate in the program follow the same format and methodology, creating a consistency and model for comparison.

Lakefield noted GFOA at times will update the rules that impact how information is handled in the report, such as a change last year in accounting for leased property, such as leased equipment.

“We have a lot of those transactions going back a number of years. So that was quite the lift to get that done,” Lakefield said of the change. It is not just a matter of switching to new calculations, either.

“Sometimes it requires us to restate the prior year – how they would have been if that rule would have been in effect. But we call it out so you can see exactly what the effect of that change is,” Lakefield said.

Work on the report begins before the close of the year and must be completed by June 30 of the following year. Lakefield said his department tries to wrap it up in May, before work on the city’s next budget starts. The finance department now is working on the 2023 report.

“We get the auditors in here to look over everything,” said Lakefield, who noted the report includes not only a look at city finances but also management discussion and analysis. The first part of the 178-page document is a synopsis or highlight reel that might hold the most interest for the public. It provides an explanatory overview of what happened and why in the past year before getting into the numbers. The document ends with a variety of statistical information gathered from in-house and outside sources, such as the city’s largest employers and history of tax revenues and mill rates.

“It’s quite an endeavor to get it updated every year,” Lakefield said. It’s an endeavor in which the entirety of the office staff plays some role. Comptroller Jenna Zelinski and treasurer Melody Shelkey are responsible for assembling much of the financial information, but it is all hands on deck to get the full document done.

Even with the award in hand, the finance department has work to do to submit responses to the GFOA’s improvement suggestions. Not every suggestion works in Minot’s situation, but Lakefield said, “It kind of keeps us up to date and current with how things are going, too, and it’s some good feedback.”

The city undergoes various audits every year, but the GFOA review provides a valuable additional tool, he said.

“”This just means that we’re having somebody else take a look at the final report and say it’s in the proper format, you are approaching this the right way, following the best practices, and evolving to keep up with those changes, too,” he said.

It also makes sense to pay attention to how finances are reported, particularly when going to the bond market for important projects such as flood control, Lakefield said.

Of course, there’s an ongoing pride associated with the awards, too. After 44 years, finance department staff say they are motivated to keep the recognition coming and the streak going.