Developing Treasury Competence with Focused Training

Background

Local governments often hire Treasurers with little or no governmental experience. While there are great educational resources available to Treasurers in Michigan, there are no options that are tailored specifically to a Treasurer’s needs. Also, there are very limited options for on-demand training.

Pain Point

Even when new Treasurers come to the job with a great education and excellent experience in the private sector, the transition to governmental finance can be daunting. There are, quite simply, no parallels between private sector and governmental finance in many instances. This leaves many new Treasurers feeling lost when faced with duties like managing a tax roll, handling banking and cash flow management, and overseeing a PA20 compliant investment portfolio.

The WoodHill Group Solution

WHG offers one-on-one training for new Treasurers. Our typical client engagement consists of a day on-site, followed by a series of regular on-line meetings to address our clients’ needs.

At our on-site visit, we typically meet with executive management first to clarify expectations and gain an understanding of community issues and specific areas of concern. We then spend the remainder of our allotted time with the Treasurer. This time is spent evaluating the Treasurer’s competencies with respect to governmental finance, providing a complete but concise overview of the Treasurer’s responsibilities, and developing a comprehensive training plan.

Once the training plan is in place, we typically meet for a few hours each week to cover items in the training plan, and to address any urgent issues that have come across the Treasurer’s desk. Our training can be very detailed or quite succinct, depending on the needs of the client. We

have performed training services that encompass only thirty hours and have done others that have included over one hundred hours.

Our typical training plan includes:

Michigan Property Tax

Navigating BS&A Software

o Creating the Tax Roll

∙State Education Tax Certification

∙L-4029s

∙Importing Data from Assessing

∙Balancing

∙Millage Tables

o Billing

o Disbursement

o Disbursement Record

o Adjustments

o Special Act Taxes

∙Industrial Facility Tax (IFT)

∙Commercial Rehabilitation Tax (CRT)

∙Commercial Facilities Tax (CFT)

∙Obsolete Property Rehabilitation Act (OPRA)

∙Neighborhood Enterprise Zone (NEZ)

∙Eligible Tax Reverted Property Tax (ETRPT) a.k.a. Land Bank

∙Senior Citizen Housing

∙Required State Filings

o Tax Increment Financing

∙Downtown Development Authority (DDA)

∙Local Development Finance Authority (LDFA)

∙Brownfield Redevelopment Finance Authority (BRFA)

o Tax Exemptions

∙Primary Residence Exemption (Proposal A)

∙Veteran’s Exemption

∙Commercial Personal Property Exemptions

∙Industrial Personal Property Exemptions

∙Poverty Exemptions

∙Tax Deferrals

∙Foreclosure Exemptions

o Settlement with the County Treasurer

Banking and Cash Flow Management

o Account Review and Analysis

o Positive Pay

o ACH Debit Block

o Post No Checks

o Cash Flow Analysis

Investments

o Investment Policy

o Investment Procedures

o Broker/Dealers

o Investment Advisors

o Custodial Safekeeping

o CDs

o Local Government Investment Pools

o Bonds

o Portfolio Strategies

o Council Reporting

Internal Controls, Separation of Duties, Fraud Control, and Financial & Administrative Policies

Collections

o Utilities

o Tax

o Delinquent Tax

o General Accounts Receivable

Debt Management

o Issuing Bonds

o Bond Counsel

o Financial Advisor

o Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB)

o Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA)

o IRS

o Recordkeeping

o Audit

o Legal Debt Margin

Resulting Benefit

With WHG training, newly appointed or elected Treasurers with little or no experience can gain the skills and knowledge required to manage governmental Treasury in a relatively short period of time. Armed with the competencies to perform their duties, these Treasurers are poised to become valuable members of the management team.