Good morning Oregon. Managed to start the day above zero. Should warm up down here by Saturday.

 

Good morning Oregon and everyone everywhere else. Started off at 26 here with fog and ice, but 1800' up the mountain it was 40. Go figure. Sunny now, fog burning off and we've made it to 31.

 

 

Good evening Oregon and everyone everywhere else. Not very warm, but otherwise a clear sunny day after the fog this morning.

 

Good evening Oregon and Visiting Ford Fans'.
Temp got 57° at home and while doing deliveries in Tillamook saw temps in the low 60's.

The Old Ford lives again. Finally got it all back together and it started right up, still need to finish getting the air out of the cooling system.
My back is done for the night hoping I can walk in the morning.

 

Happy Friday! Early to work...sooner I go home!

 

Good Friday morning Rich and those to follow.
I wish it would work that way for me, I have to wait for place's to open.

 

Good morning Oregon, welcome to February! Warm up finally starts down here today, should be near 40 later on.

 

 

Well truth be known... I just need some quiet time so I can concentrate and not be bothered. I have this massive spreadsheet I use for budgeting and it's a nightmare. And I'm not an accountant... I love budget season...

 

 

Good morning Oregon and everyone everywhere else. 43.1 with rain...I was beginning to worry about our moss crop.

 

Good morning Oregon

 

You have got to love that budgeting! The most enjoyable full of BS part of the job.

I used to have the extreme privilege of doing the monthly updates for my division with justification as to why we overspent in a category, including someone spending 201 minutes on a cell phone instead of their allocated 200 minutes. (Cpl. Smith spent 202 minutes on the phone because of a long winded District Attorney.) Then I had to justify why I needed to keep money allocated to a line item that we didn't exhaust funds for the previous month. (We saved gas money this month because Cpl. Smith spent so much time on the phone with the D.A. and less time driving, and we had more sunny days so we had extra mileage for the motorcycles and less mileage on the patrol cars and I spent extra time off the road & in the office working on budget justification and budget reports..)
Then there was the quarterlies. We worked on the Federal FY so we didn't start working on 'next years' budget until June. So, you go right ahead and have all that fun Rich. I'm sure others in the office are jealous.

 

Our FY is July through June and we start the process in Jan. I have to look at what I'm doing this FY through June and figure out what I'm doing for next FY. For the most part it's not that hard. Revenue = expenses. My engineering dept budget is super simple. Because I'm lucky, I also have the airport budget and I also spend money out of wastewater and transportation funds. My Director and I tag team the last two and I do the others. Most folks have one budget that's easy like my engineering budget.

Where everything goes off the rails is when I have a federally funded airport project. Feds pay 90% and city cover the 10%. Since I can't afford the 10% I go out and get grants from the state to cover that part. Well...I'm still finishing up the paperwork work for the runway project which took 3 federal grants that cover different parts of the project and 1 state grant. This is the project that that took too long so I've spanned several fiscal years. The feds only allow me to get reimbursed up to 90% of their 90% until the project is "Complete". Complete being all of the paperwork is done and I submit one last reimbursement. The state grant only allows a reimbursement when I'm reimbursed by the feds and they keep 5% for retainage that's payable when that paperwork is done...See the fun here? It's a bit of a catch 22. Don't forget about spanning fiscal years because we have to close the accounting books at the end of July and we do get audited every year. How we pass an audit I have clue. To add some excitement, this project went over budget. The feds will cover the extra costs in my fed grant, but the state grant won't so there is "out of pocket" costs. And No I'm pretty sure I'm not an accountant.

So then I start another project (because I must seriously like pain and alcohol ) with another federal grant and state grant. It of course will span fiscal years. This state grant only cover 7.5% of the 10% so I my "out of pocket" cost is 2.5% which I guess I need to keep track off. There will of course be a second set of grants to compete the newest project. 2 fed and 2 state.

Now if you made this far... what I have to do is take all of that "stuff" and boil it down to two revenue amounts and two expense amounts for each fiscal year for both projects.

I screw it up every shot I take at. It's close but you can't check it as nothing adds up. We have a "finance" department with CPA's... they won't touch this pile of poo with a 3 mile stick. Good times so I might take your budgeting Jim as it sounds pretty easy. I won't even go into the problem that I've probably over spent the airport budget with all of the issues with trees, fuel tanks, and HVAC break downs.

Did I mention I'm not an accountant?