On behalf of the City, Mayor, City Council and Board of Finance the Comptroller’s Office is pleased to present the 2023-2024 budget document. This is the first budget fully prepared using ClearGov, a digital budget software platform. The transition of the budget document was a team effort of the Comptroller’s Office with the full support of the Mayor, City Council and Board of Finance. The new budget document format provides much more information than prior year budgets, incorporates more graphs and charts, and is easy to navigate from section to section via links built into the system. The Comptroller’s Office always views the budget document as a work in progress with the intent to continually build upon and improve the document year over year, not only with suggestions from GFOA reviewers but also with input from City department heads and elected and appointed officials. Using this platform, this year’s process was more engaging, particularly with regard to the development of the Capital Improvement and Strategic Plan. City officials were better informed throughout the process and participated in a ranking of projects through established criteria set by the Comptroller, the Mayor and the Capital Improvement and Strategic Planning Committee. The criteria were based on what was determined to be important to the future growth and financial and economic stability of the City.
The City of Bristol has annually submitted its budget document to the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Distinguished Budget Award program and received this recognition for 23 years. This budget document will also be submitted which we believe meets all of the required criteria of the awards program. We are proud of the final 2023-2024 final budget product and look forward to continuing to use this platform to improve the budget document and process going forward.
Many thanks to the Comptrollers Staff, Robin Manuele, Assistant Comptroller, Jessica Pilgrim, Senior Accountant and JoAnn Martin, Accounting and Budget Analyst with the budget development and special thanks to Jodi McGrane, Assistant to the Comptroller, for her patience and determination to work through the transition to the new platform.
