BY FREDA MIKLIN
GOVERNMENTAL REPORTER
On June 6, Shawn Cordsen, finance director of the City of Greenwood Village, presented the 2022 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (2022 Report) to the GV City Council in a study session which was audio-recorded, but for which there are no official minutes, which is GV’s regular practice for study sessions. The presentation was not a part of GV’s official city council meeting.
Cordsen noted that 2022 citywide revenues were approximately $64 million compared to expenditures of $59 million. After a mandatory accounting adjustment to record as an asset and a liability the city’s required payments of $3.3 million through 2027 for photo red-light enforcement equipment to American Traffic Solutions, Inc. of Mesa, AZ, he explained, “We added almost $8.7 million to fund balance (in 2022), taking it from $62 million to $70.6 million, a substantial increase.”
Fund balance is the amount of money left in the bank after all bills are paid at the end of the year.
The finance director said that 2022 was a year when, “We just kept seeing that revenue coming in,” resulting in income to the general fund alone exceeding the amount budgeted by $7.3 million, even after mid-year amendments increasing that budget, while general fund expenditures came in $2.1 million under the adjusted budgeted amount, for a positive variance of $9.4 million.
Paul Niedermuller, principal at CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, Broomfield (CLA), GV’s outside auditors, told the city council that the only change in the city’s financial statements from previous years was the capitalization of leases required by a (2017) rule of the Government Accounting Standards Board, and that his firm had found that all GV’s accounting practices are within allowable standards. He also commended Cordsen’s department with being “extremely forthcoming” in its cooperation with the auditors and noted that no adjustments to management’s financial statements were necessary for CLA to issue a “clean” opinion.
Council Member Paul Wiesner wanted to know how the budgeting process resulted in total tax revenues being nearly $7 million (17.4%) more what was expected. Cordsen explained that the finance department expected revenues to grow in 2021 after the 2020 COVID-related decline, but thought that, in 2022, “Things would level out. In fact, they have not. They’ve continued to show growth over what we had prior to the pandemic.”
As well, he noted, “We’re still running (in 2023) 10% to 12% above where we were at the same time last year,” adding that the restaurant industry, once GV’s largest contributor to sales tax, has “backed off,” replaced by technology as the largest generator of sales and use tax. Cordsen pointed out that the building materials use tax, generated by new construction, is not a contributor to this calculation because it is not a general fund revenue.
No other city council members, all of whom were present in person or by remote connection, asked the finance manager any substantive question. The city manager followed up on what Cordsen had said about 2023 revenue trends. Cordsen told him that, based on current trends, his department estimated that GV sales and use tax collections for 2023 will be 10.5% higher than the amount that was budgeted when the year began. The starting revenue budget for 2023 was the amount collected in 2022 that exceeded that year’s budget by $7 million.
In total, the 2022 Report states, “The City of Greenwood Village’s overall net position increased $12,275,435 from the prior fiscal year.”
GV’s fund balance has increased steadily during the past six years, despite a short dip in 2020, for which the City received and added to its coffers $4 million in American Rescue Act Funds to make up for the decline in sales tax revenue it experienced during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The trend in GV’s total fund balance over the past six years is:
Year Fund Balance
- 2017 $54,000,000
- 2018 $55,000,000
- 2019 $56,000,000
- 2020 $51,000,000
- 2021 $62,000,000
- 2022 $71,000,000
fmiklin.villager@gmail.com