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About City of Beaumont Finances
The Finance Department is comprised of two divisions under the Finance Director. Those divisions are Accounting and Finance/Budget. These two divisions serve to facilitate financial transactions, protect the City’s financial assets against loss from unauthorized use or disposition and to provide accurate and timely reporting to the City Council, City Manager, City staff and the public.
The Accounting division’s primary functions include managing policies to ensure proper controls are in place over financial transactions, timely payments of invoices, revenue and cash management, invoicing, purchasing, account reconciliation, and annual audits. The Budget/Finance division’s primary functions include budget preparation, budget management, Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) accounting and reporting, Community Facility District (CFD) administration, finance and investments, debt service administration and developer impact fee management.
The city receives a variety of revenue to fund government services including:
-Property taxes
-CFD assessments
-Gas tax
-Sales tax
-Utility users tax
-Franchise fees
-Transient occupancy tax
- Business licenses and other permit fees
-Charges for services
-Fines and forfeitures
-Investment earnings
-Donations and other miscellaneous revenues
The Finance Department is also responsible for putting together financial reports, as well as the budget. You can view the City's budget here;
To find out more about the Finance Department check out our video here.
All About Municipal Bonds and Accountability
What is a Municipal Bond? Municipal bonds are debt securities issued by states, cities, counties and other governmental entities to fund day-to-day obligations and to finance capital projects such as building schools, highways or sewer systems. By purchasing municipal bonds, you are in effect lending money to the bond issuer in exchange for a promise of regular interest payments, usually semi-annually, and the return of the original investment, or “principal” (debt service payments). A municipal bond’s maturity date (the date when the issuer of the bond repays the principal) may be years in the future. (Investor.gov)
What is the process for making debt service payments? Each bond issuance produces a document “Official Statement” which provides information for investors, including the terms of the bond and financial information on the issuer. They also typically contain information regarding the purpose of the bond, whether the issuer can redeem the bond prior to maturity; and when and how principal and interest on the bond will be repaid.
There is also another document “Indenture of Trust” which is a contract or legal document that records the obligations of the bond issuer and the Trustee. The document specifies the agreement to follow the pledge of revenues, receipt, deposit and application of revenues, accounts needed and investments.
The City of Beaumont is responsible for sending the collected assessments for the debt service to the Trustee. The Trustee sends the City an invoice for debt service that is due and collects the funds in time to make the debt service payments to the investors. Debt service payments are due semi-annually on September 1st and March 1st of each fiscal year.
What is Continuing Disclosure? Government issuers must provide to the market annual financial and operating information, notice of occurrence of certain material events, and notice of any failure of the issuer to provide the annual financial and operating information. A material event would include principal and interest payment delinquencies, nonpayment related defaults, unscheduled draws on debt service reserves reflecting financial difficulties, unscheduled draws on credit enhancements reflecting financial difficulties, substitution of credit or liquidity providers or their failure to perform, adverse tax opinions or events affecting the tax-exempt status of the security, modifications of rights to security holders, bonds calls, defeasances, release, substitution, or sale of property securing payment of the securities, and rating changes.
Where can I find continuing disclosure notices? https://emma.msrb.org/Search by State, then type in search box “Beaumont”
How are the funds spent? When the City has an eligible expenditure (use of the bond proceeds), the City submits to the trustee with a requisition to release the funds to the City. The requisition must include the support needed to allow the release of the funds. Requisitions are available for view on the City Website public documents search. They are in the bonds folder and then requisitions folder. http://publicdocs.beaumontca.gov/WebLink/Browse.aspx?id=149406&dbid=0&repo=Beaumont
Where can I see what bonds the City has outstanding? The City’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report is a great place to see all outstanding debts related to the City. You can find this in the Notes to the Basic Financial Statements Note 6, Long-Term Obligations.
Management Reporting – Management reports bond activity to the Finance and Audit Committee and City Council within the quarterly Investment Reports. All debt activity is reported within the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, which can be found in the quarterly reports to the Finance and Audit Committee and City Council.