City of Gainesville celebrates fiscal achievement and government finance professionals
Press release from City of Gainesville
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – In a special proclamation at the March 6, 2025 meeting of the Gainesville City Commission, Mayor Harvey L. Ward will declare March 17 to 21 as Government Finance Professionals Week. The proclamation honors the hard work of these essential personnel and provides an opportunity to recognize the City’s recent success in overcoming financial hurdles.
In March 2024, the City of Gainesville closed the books on five years of difficult financial reporting by receiving a clean financial audit from external auditor Purvis, Gray & Company. At that time, the City’s Department of Financial Services had completed the Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) on schedule; resolved two lingering findings carried over from previous years; and finished with no findings.
In recognition of this accomplishment, the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) awarded Gainesville the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting. This honor signifies the City’s 2023 financial report met high standards of transparency, accuracy, strong financial management, and accountability. With the Fiscal Year 2024 ACFR expected later this month, it is hoped the City will earn a clean financial audit for the second year in a row.
These continued improvements have been achieved through the implementation of strategies designed by City Manager Cynthia W. Curry, who arrived at the City in November 2021 and immediately escalated the organization’s financial health to the top of her list of priorities. She installed key staff to manage the specialized work of government accounting and dedicated resources to solving operational challenges.
Fast on the heels of those financial reporting corrections, however, came the substantial revenue reductions that followed the City’s separation from Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU). By early 2023, the City Manager had announced a strategic hiring freeze and a swift pivot to zero-based budgeting, a technique introduced to lower City spending by streamlining operations without visibly changing each department’s high level of service.
The efficacy of this approach was affirmed in July 2024, when Fitch Ratings upgraded Gainesville’s credit rating, citing the hiring freeze and reductions in expenditures as two of the factors underpinning the City’s ability to maintain a financially balanced position. With the fiscal year 2026 budget now beginning to take shape, government finance professionals are guiding departmental leaders in the search for further efficiencies to pare down expenditures.
“This strategy ensures that we remain good stewards of public resources while positioning Gainesville for long-term financial stability,” said City Manager Curry. “As we look to the future, I am confident we will craft a prudent and conservative fiscal year 2026 budget proposal that meets the needs of our community.”
Those community needs are also the work of the City’s finance and budget staff, who play a crucial role in carrying out the policy direction of the Gainesville City Commission. Their tasks include administering grants and funding, including the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which to date has helped more than 40 local nonprofit organizations or external community partners focused on housing assistance, food security, homeless support services, workforce programs, and affordable housing construction. Through September 30, 2024, $17.8 million (or 55%) of the $32.4 million in ARPA funding provided the City has been transferred for their support.
As a final feather in the finance cap, in February 2025 Gainesville earned the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for the 36th time, making the City second in the state for the number of awards received. It is this commitment to fiscal responsibility and strategic financial planning that the proclamation honors, as the City celebrates the staff dedicated to building a stronger, more financially resilient Gainesville.
City of Gainesville Commissioners are failures.
Wow. Awards and a week of recognition for simply doing your job. Only in Gainesville. It’s a shame they didn’t have the opportunity to cut all the fluff from the city budget that the Democrat politicians and their city manager seem unable to do.
Whew, It has taken about 7 years after failed short-term (and short statue) Gainesville City Manager Anthony Lyons decimated the finance and accounting section by running off one finance director after another with his insane ideas of what he wanted which was virtually impossilbe. His complete lack of almost any financial knowledge led him to insist that the Finance Director be present at any and every meeting of city officials since he was incapable of answering even the simplest finance questions on his own. After his third failed attempt at keeping a finance director he resigned and fled to hiding instead of suffering the embarasment of sounding like an ignorant fool when commissioners or the public had finance or accounting questions. Now, 7 years later, the system is finally recitified. Never again!
BS: He fled because of GNV CC appetite to spend, spend, spend!
You must be him. LOL, know-it-all (but ignorant of fin & acct) Anthony Lyons himself wanted to spend millions on his smart city crap that was never tested and never worked. Like the self driving buss supposed to be operating in 2018 but still isn’t operational as described.
Rectified? 🤣🤣🤣… that’s funnier than one of Jake’s cartoons.
Maybe you’ve forgotten, it’s the City’s own fiscal incompetence that caused such disarray and broken financial records. They continuously circumvented and impeded audits and when Mr. Holt, (former auditor), started peeling back the layers and brought it to their unwilling attention, he was fired.
Just so it stays in the memory banks, the same fiscal incompetence led to the creation of the GRU Authority.
Wow I guess we have these people to think for everything, clowns
Are you kidding me???? The state of Florida in its audit of City of Gainesville finance department said that the employees had little finance background or none
“The Government Finance Officers Association (or GFOA) is a professional association of approximately 19,000 state, provincial, and local government finance officers in the United States and Canada….”
From the article:
“…the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) awarded Gainesville the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting.”
“…in February 2025 Gainesville earned the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for the 36th time, making the City second in the state for the number of awards received.”
Gee , this tough. Do I listen to the cracker jack accountant’s with the green eye shades on this comment board, Jim Konish, Chuck Clemons, and Belarski …… or the GFAO?
Tough choice.
Hey cretin. Read the audit from the state. That is the real facts. Get real.
Actually the award is more of a membership award for paying ridiculously high annual dues. They only go by the licensed auditors report of a clean statement, they do no/zero inspection of the books themselves. It’s all about retaining members who can show all the annual stupid and useless plaques to the public.
The city could waste millions and get nothing and that would have no impact on the GFOA award. It’s all about if the accounting firm opinion was the financial statements were correct. That’s it, you can be bankrupt and still get a clean statement and a GFOA plaque every year.
Our City (Newberry) uses Purvis and Gray as well and I have always been pleased with their work and attention for detail.
That being said I have been critical of Gainesville for a long, long time and it’s all warranted. But I am man enough and willing to congratulate them on this. Their books were an absolute mess and they finally got it cleaned up. Knowing this is not easy to deal with. Good on them.
Newberry has won this award 6 or 7 years in row now and it takes a LOT of work, planning, and regular self critique.
Right! Key words “ books were a mess” and “got it cleaned up”. That’s all the annual plaque is for, the books were right. It is no indications of the solvency or debt level of the audited entity (C of G).
You must be kidding…..”fiscal achievement”? The only achievement I see is how much $$$ they have been able to waste and then ask for more.