Public Budgeting - St Paul Public Library - Case Study Example

Public Budgeting Public Budgeting Public budgeting systems refer to systems that aid in making choices of means and ends. The aim of budgeting is to distribute scare resources among different public demands in order to attain societal objectives and goals (Papadakos et al., 2014). Relying on conditions at a particular period, budgets normally tend to stress financial control, planning, as well as managerial improvements. Budgeting ensures cost effective use of resources so as to gain the most profits and high productivity. Companies’ strategies cannot be completed without a budget, which provides its financial forecasts (Gruenewald & Smith, 2014). Therefore, budgeting assumes a defined approach and considers the available resources. They should establish the best practices through managing expenses making sure that there is accountability, high performance and setting accurate budget plus the use of relative benchmarks. The best practice for budgets will use tools like balanced scorecard and the developing of overseeing of the variances and setting forth counteractive action plans (Papadakos et al., 2014). Thus, a recommended budgeting approach for any organization would comprise of setting the revenue part of the budget. This is then balanced through adjusting the budget’s cost side. The financial controller can have access to the next years budget rooted in historical data and performance (Gruenewald & Smith, 2014). This paper has selected the Saint Paul Public Library to discuss their budgeting. The main aim of this report is to bridge the gap between theory and practice in public budgeting and financial management by focusing on what professionals and administrators actually do in the field. The paper will analyze the actual budget of Saint Paul Public Library, offering analysis, insight and recommendations on the chosen business. Background of the Library The St. Paul Public Library is a library system catering to the residents of St. Paul, Minnesota, in the U.S. The library system comprises of a Central Library, 12 branch locations, as well as a bookmobile. In addition, it is an affiliate of the Metropolis Library Service Agency, a group of 8 Twin Cities library systems (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). The public library, which was started on 1856, has a mission of connecting individuals in St. Paul with the significant and happiness of learning through a lifetime. They consider themselves as the cornerstone of a thriving town, welcoming individuals of all cultures and ages, strengthening people ties and learning networks, as well as learning networks, through inspiring and motivating everyone with extensive ideas (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). Their strategic goals is that they have advanced learning priorities, are staunch stewards of private and public funds and their libraries are key centers of engaging communities (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). The library ensures that residents are engaged in cultural, neighborhood, and civic life plus that they also volunteer and mentor people who want to strengthen their neighborhoods. Their work is to anticipate and react to the community’s need and urge for information and also to facilitate lifelong learning in order to not only stimulate, but also nurture a yearn to read in young people. They ensure to offer reading materials in order to meet the attention of each and every age and to improve the quality of life in St. Paul (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). Primary Expenditures For a public company, a majority of its expenditure should be channeled out to matters that ensure everything that concerns the public is catered for, for instance, if the public requires more computers or workers to tender to them, it is the work of the budget planners to ensure that everything, in terms of resources, is in place to ensure that the public is fully satisfied (Papadakos et al., 2014). Their entire budget process is planned to conform to the City charter, Minnesota law, and the legislative code. The budget development process commences in February and has four phases from January – March, April – June, July – September and October – December. For the year 2015, the library has a proposed budget of around USD$ 16,113,284. The previous year’s expenses totaled to around USD$ 15,989,839 which is a change of USD$ 123,445 compared to 2015’s budget. Some of their primary expenses include employee expense, services, materials and supplies, additional expenses, capital outlay and financing uses (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). On employee expenses, mainly salaries and rewards, as well as the allowances, it amounted to USD$ 11,722,945 from USD$ 11,637,587. The services expense, this means the services that they outsourced such as cleaners, repairers and things like that amount to USD$ 2,989,114 from the previous year, which was US$ 2,949,687. This is a change of exactly USD$ 39,427. The planned budget for materials and supplies for 2015 is USD$ 2,131,711 from USD$ 2,689,710 in 2014 (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). This, unlike the two other mentioned expensive has seen a reduction of USD$557,999. Other additional expenses such as travel expensive were USD$ 145,771 in the two years, 2014 and 2015 seeing no rise or drop. However, the capital outlay saw a reduction of USD$ 65,000 from USD$ 360,000 to USD$ 295,000. Other financial uses such as petty cash was USD$ 37,706, in 2014, but claimed to USD$ 42,145, in 2015. This was an increase of USD$ 4,439 (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). How these Expenditures Determine Public Policy Priorities This institution’s expenditure is determined by the will of its leading forces: their priorities, their desired model, as well as their understanding of recent socioeconomic phase (Bruns, 2014). Past decisions have had relevant impact on public expenditure due to incrementalism and inertia. Bureaucracy also inside the institution plays a significant role for the actual expenditure. For the library, specific expenditure categories in addition to other items have their opponent and favorable deciders, that is, certain large-scale projects can be the subject of a top management debate and the result can rely on its outcome (Bruns, 2014). However, as earlier stated in this paper, for a public company, a majority of its expenditure should be channeled out to matters that ensure everything that concerns the public is catered for, for instance, it the public requires more computers or workers to tender to them it is the work of the budget planners to ensure that everything, in terms of resources is in place to ensure that the public is fully satisfied (Gruenewald & Smith, 2014). The library has a strict policy on the betterment of the public mainly through learning. Their major priorities lie on the public such as connecting individuals in St. Paul with the significant and happiness of learning through a lifetime and welcoming individuals of all cultures and ages, strengthening people ties and learning networks, as well as learning networks, through inspiring and motivating everyone with extensive ideas (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). Most of their funds go to paying workers, who are the main assets of the company because they are involved one in one with dealing with the visitors. Also, allocating such huge amount of funds on services, maintenances and materials are all meant to enhance the customer or public experience of the library (Bruns, 2014). Such huge amounts of funds help in ensuring that their amenities are ready to use and help is always available when a visitor needs it among other related things. Whether the Budget has decreased or Increased and What it indicates From the expenses listed earlier in this paper, we could not that a majority of them had gone up from the previous year’s amount (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). The total expenses rose by USD$ 123,445, employee expenses rose by USD$ 84,575, service expenses rose by USD$ 72,429 and materials and supplies rose by USD$ 12,001. Capital Outlay was the only expense that has seen a reduction from last year’s amount by USD$ 50,000 (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). In a majority of the cases, an organization with a carefully planned budget and many expenses simply means that the business is operating on a large scale plus that they are also earning more profit from the previous financial years to enable them the cater for these new expenses (Bruns, 2014). Achieving greater profits also means that the endeavors of the organization are effective making it a successful entity. Unlike most organizations that tend to cut cost of operations wherever they can, even on their employees incomes, the library realized that in order to fully appeal to the , they first must appeal to the workers and the library (Callison et al., 2014). This is why a majority of their expenses goes to paying their workers and maintenance services for the library. Workers will be motivated to deliver exceptional services if they are adequately paid ensuring that each and every amenity is properly maintained will ensure that everything runs smoothly for the client. A majority of the services organizations are known to invest on factors that will give the client value for his money or time (Callison et al., 2014). For example, banks, these days, are investing in seats, water dispensers and television sets to fit all of them in the customer service area in order to avoid making the client stand in long queues waiting to be service. Instead of standing in long queues, they can seat enjoy a glass of water while watching TV and waiting to be service. Such an endeavor is what St. Paul Library has undertaken (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). Whether Agency is Allocating Resources Wisely Success depends on the wise distribution of your resources. And whereas everyone wants to carry out everything, it is hardly ever feasible to do so or at least not at once. In the library business, the more time you spend on developing the interior of your library and the expertise of your workers, and also ensuring the materials on the library are always being updated, the more chance you stand at realizing your mission (Shapiro, 2014). Your workers and client should come first. This will align all other things in the list of their priorities and help you know how to allocate your resources. St. Paul Public Library allocates its resources wisely because you can see that most of their resources are channeled towards the satisfaction of the public and their workers (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). After their catering to their employees and workers, another huge chunk of money goes to services such as maintenance and ensuring that the library runs properly (St. Paul Public Library, 2015). Conclusion and Recommendations Effectively managing a public library implies doing the right things at the right time (Mitchell, 2014). If your resources are being directed to your objectives, which have nothing or little to do with the library’s goals and mission for its community, then the library is certainly doing the wrong things right and perhaps will not be able to fulfill its real goals (Mitchell, 2014). Every public library, irrespective of size, has four key resources to assist in meeting its mission, as well as achieving its goals, in the community. Staff, technology, the library’s collection, plus the library facility itself all have to be successfully controlled for the library to attain the right results (Mitchell, 2014). Managing for Results requires librarians to take a proactive approach to marshaling and managing all of the library’s resources effectively. Using this planning guide, librarians will be able to identify their key resources, make choices among different priorities, and assign resources to achieve results. The key to effectively allocating resources is first realizing what you need to achieve (Raudla, 2014). A majority of a library’s resources are already assigned to some goal or another. Nevertheless, effectively analyzing your results will force you to calculate whether your resources are being utilized to realize the real goals of the library in society. This might imply evaluating library goals or reallocating resources in order to be sure that the library’s resources are utilized to make sure that the library serves the community, attains its mission, as well as offers patrons what they want and need (Raudla, 2014). There are many workforms planned to allow librarians to identify, gather and study the information required to suitably distribute resources (Raudla, 2014). You should consider using such workforms in order to know how to properly allocate your resources. You should center on factors required to allocate resources, for instance, the number of professional staff wanted, how to budget for library materials, the kind and amount of hardware and software required for the community served and the amount of space required for programs. References Bruns, H. J. (2014). Accounting change and value creation in public services—Do relational archetypes make a difference in improving public service performance?. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 25(4), 339-367. Callison, D., Fink, J., & Hager, G. (2014). A survey of cooperation and communication between public and school librarians in Indiana and beyond. Indiana Libraries, 8(2), 78-86. Gruenewald, D. A., & Smith, G. A. (2014). Place-based education in the global age: Local diversity. New York: Routledge. Mitchell, S. W. (2014). An exploratory study of priority based budgeting: Identification of public values and public priorities through citizen engagement in government budgeting decisions. Southfield, MI: Lawrence Technological University. Papadakos, J. et al. (2014). What criteria do consumer health librarians use to develop library collections? a phenomenological study. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 102(2), 78. Raudla, R. (2014). Budgetary nstitutions. In Encyclopedia of Law and Economics (pp. 1-9). New York: Springer New York. Shapiro, M. (2014). Developing virtual Spanish-language resources: Exploring a best practices model for public libraries. OLA Quarterly, 9(2), 15-19. St. Paul Public Library. (2015). Saint Paul Public Library Agency 2015 mayor’s proposed budget. Retrieved from http://www.sppl.org/sites/default/files/rcl/pdf/budget/2015_proposed.pdf Read More