This document is presented as a summary of the FY2007 Final Strategic Operating Plan
FY07 Strategic Operating Plan Summary

FY2006 & FY2007 Preliminary Strategic Operating Plan
FY06 & 07 Prelliminary Strategic Operating PlanFY06 & 07

FY2006 & FY2007  Final Strategic Operating Plan
The final budget operating plan for FY2006 & FY2007 is posted below by category. 

Introduction and Executive Summary
Strategic Focus Area Plans
Summary Statistics all Funds
Water & Sewer Fund
Charlotte Area Transit Plan
Aviation Fund
Storm Water Fund
Neighborhood Development Grants Fund
Municipal Service District
Risk Management Fund
All Other Funds
Capital Investment Plan
Key Terms
Appropriation-Tax Levy Ordinance

The operating budget describes estimated revenues and expenses for delivering City services by City departments.

The operating budget is submitted by the City Manager to the governing board, City Council. Along with any supporting data, the operating budget is the basis for City Council's fiscal policy decisions for the coming fiscal year.

The City of Charlotte's Strategic Operating Plan totals $1.37 billion for FY2006. This includes $906.0 million for the operating budget and $463.3 million for the capital investment plan.

The tax rate for FY2007 is 45.86 cents per $100 assessed valuation.

Strategic Operating Plan (Budget) Development
Budget & Evaluation Glossary and Terms

Strategic Operating Plan (Budget) Development

How is the Strategic Operating Plan developed?

• City Council organizes its Council Budget Committee.
• The Budget & Evaluation director shares financial information with Council during its retreat in January.
• Council provides additional budget instructions, reaffirms or identifies priorities for service delivery.
• Business units submit budget requests in January; analysts review the requests between January and April.
• Council discusses the budget during several budget retreats, which begin late February or early March.
• Budget & Evaluation develops a preliminary strategic operating plan for the City Manager's recommended budget.
• The Budget Director presents the City Manager's recommended budget or strategic operating plan to City Council in May.

What is the detailed process?

• The Leadership Team reviews organizational strategy during the fall of the year, through a series of retreats. During these retreats, the Leadership Team reviews feedback from the organization with regards to organizational strategy. The result of which is the development of a revised Corporate Scorecard. The Leadership Team undertakes this extensive review of corporate strategy every two years, which is consistent with Charlotte's two-year Strategic Operating Plan (budget).
• Staff focus area cabinets develop draft focus area strategic plans that include corporate level initiatives and measures to address Council's focus areas.
• Once the corporate strategy has been established and communicated through the corporate scorecard and the focus area plans, Budget & Evaluation formally presents information to each of the City's business units through a budget operations group. This group consists of employees responsible for developing the business plans and budgets within each of the City's fourteen key business units.
• City business units are expected to develop their business plans and make resource requests based on organization focus and strategy.
• City Council organizes its Council Budget Committee.
• Budget & Evaluation develops a mid-year/current financial status report and financial projections (typically five years).
• In January or February of each year, Council participates in a Manager/Council retreat. The Budget & Evaluation director shares information regarding the current financial status, five-year financial projections and service delivery needs. Council provides any additional parameters for possible changes to the budget. Council reaffirms or identifies its priorities and discusses citizen concerns and expectations for service delivery for the next fiscal year.
• Before the retreat, Council focus area cabinets meet discuss and the draft strategic focus area plans for the five focus areas. The cabinets also consider the mission and vision for each of the focus areas and confirm that the focus areas continue to respond to the needs of the citizens.
• During the annual retreat, City Council reviews and approves the Strategic Focus Area Plan, which is the combination of all the plans from each of the five cabinets.
• Business units submit their budget and business plan requests to the Budget & Evaluation office in January. The City of Charlotte develops a two-year operating budget and five-year capital budget. The first year of the process requires line item operating detail requests from each Key Business Unit (KBU) for two years of identified needs. The second year of the process requires detailed information for requested changes (increases or decreases) to the second year budget plan, which Council approves by resolution in the first year. Budget analysts review KBU budget requests for inclusion in the Manager's recommended two-year budget.
• Concurrently, a Council Budget Committee convenes and provides additional input throughout the process to ensure that the operating budget is reflective of the needs and issues of the City and the City organization.
• Scheduled as budget retreats from late February through June, the entire Council gives the City Manager and the Budget & Evaluation office input on the budget development.
• Based on City Council priorities, community needs, the directives provided and the financial projections available, the Budget and Evaluation Office, develops a preliminary strategic operating plan for the City Manager's recommended budget.
• The Budget & Evaluation office presents the Manager's recommended budget in May as the City's Preliminary Strategic Operating Plan. As a modified program budget, this document reflects core services costs within the business unit. City Council uses the Preliminary Operating Plan to make decisions to be reflected in the final approved budget.
• City Council can propose changes to the Manager's recommended budget. Council votes on those changes through a straw-vote process. Changes receiving six or more votes are included in the budget ordinance for final vote.
• The City advertises a summary of the Manager's recommended budget and a schedule of the televised public hearing and Council decision-making discussions in area local newspapers. The Budget & Evaluation office distributes the Manager's recommended budget to area, regional and university libraries.
• Citizens have opportunities to respond to the Manager's recommended budget through scheduled public hearings.
• Following the presentation in May, the Citizen's public hearing and final decisions by the Council, Budget & Evaluation publishes the Final Strategic Operating Plan.

Budget & Evaluation Glossary and Terms

Accountability: Monitoring, measuring and evaluating the performance and progress of policies, plans and programs to ensure that results are achieved.

Actual Expenditures: Expenditures made in the prior fiscal year. This includes Personal Services, Employee-Related Expenditures and all other operating expenditures as authorized by the City Council.

Allocation: The expenditure amount planned for a particular project or service, but an amount that requires additional Council action or "appropriation" before expenditures will be authorized.

Annualization: An adjustment, made to the current year funding base as a part of the agency budget request, that will allow a partially funded program to operate for a full year.

Appropriation: A legal authorization granted by the City's legislative authority (the Mayor and the City Council) to make expenditures and incur obligations for specific purposes.

Biennial budgeting: A process that estimates revenues and expenditures for a two-year period.

Block Grant: Allocation of Federal money to a state or its subdivision in accordance with a distribution formula prescribed by law or administrative regulations, for activities of a continuing nature within a restricted subject area.

Budget--Adopted and Recommended: In Charlotte, the City Manager submits to the Mayor and Council a proposed expenditure and revenue level for all City operations for the coming fiscal year. This is the recommended budget. When the Mayor and City Council have formally agreed upon the expenditure and revenue levels, the recommended budget becomes the adopted budget. The adopted budget appropriates funds and establishes legal expenditure limits.

Budget--Endorsed: The City of Charlotte implements biennial budgeting through the adoption of two one-year budgets. When adopting the budget for the first year of the biennium, the Council endorses a budget for the second year. This Endorsed Budget is the basis for a Recommended Budget for the second year of the biennium, and is reviewed and adopted in the following year.

Budget: A plan of financial information embodying an estimate of proposed expenditures for a given period and proposed means of financing them.

CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report): The City's annual financial statements prepared by the Finance Department Accounting Division.

Capital Improvement Program (CIP): Annual appropriations from specific funding sources are shown in the City's budget for certain capital purposes such as street improvements, building construction, and some kinds of facility maintenance. These appropriations are supported by a five-year allocation plan that details all projects, fund sources, and expenditure amounts, including many multi-year projects that require funding beyond the one-year period of the annual budget. The allocation for the Capital Investment Program covers a five-year period and is available as a separate document.  

Capital Outlay: Expenditures for the upkeep, preservation, development, improvement or acquisition of lands, buildings or certain associated equipment.

Chart of Accounts: A chart of expenditure accounts (line items) used to record each type of expenditure incurred by City operations.

Community Development Block Grant (CDBG): A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant that local governments receive annually to support economic development projects, low-income housing, and services in low-income neighborhoods.

Cost Center: The allocation of resources by functional area within an agency.

Cumulative Reserve Subfund (CRF): A fund Charlotte retains for capital investments, budget reserves, and certain kinds of capital maintenance activities.

Full-time Equivalent (FTE): A term that expresses the amount of time a position has been budgeted for in terms of the amount of time a regular, full-time employee normally works in a year. Most full-time employees (1.00 FTE) are paid for 2,088 hours in a year (or 2,096 in a leap year). A position that has been budgeted to work half-time for a full year, or full-time for only six months, is .50 FTE.

Fund Balance: The difference between the assets and liabilities of a particular fund. This incorporates the difference between the revenues and expenditures each year.

Fund: An accounting entity with a set of self-balancing revenue and expenditure accounts used to record the financial affairs of a governmental organization.

General Fund: A central fund into which most of the City's general tax revenues and discretionary resources are pooled, and which is allocated to support many of the traditional operations of City government. The primary sources of revenues for the General Fund include sales tax, and property tax.

KBU (Key Business Units): Departments within the organization that provide direct services to the community, i.e. Solid Waste Services, Fire and Police. Support business units provide direct service to the KBU's, i.e. Human Resources, Finance and Budget & Evaluation.

Performance Measures: Used to measure results and ensure accountability.

Personal Services: A category of line items of expenditure for salaries and wages paid to the employees, elected officials and board or commission members. Payments for leave categories, overtime and other miscellaneous earnings are also recorded in this line item.

Privatization: The opening of government markets allowing for equitable competition among the private and public sectors for the privilege of delivering services to the public.

Program: A body of work that delivers a service or accomplishes a task and whose costs can be isolated and identified.

Program Budgeting: A budget system that focuses on program missions, achievements and cost effectiveness. Program budgeting is linked to planning and accountability.

Program Category: The budget organizes departmental expenditures into functional or program areas called program categories which are the City's budget control levels. These organizational units generally represent divisions of departments and are organized along program lines. Each of these units can be divided into smaller organization units.

Reorganization: Reorganization refers to changes in the budget and reporting structure within or between KBUs.

Resource Allocation: The determination and allotment of resources or assets necessary to carry out strategies within the priority framework established in the goal setting process.

Revenue: Additions to assets that do not include any liability, represent the recovery of an expenditure, represent the cancellation of certain liabilities without a corresponding increase in other liabilities or a decrease in assets, or represent contribution of fund capital in Enterprise Funds.

Support Business Units: Departments that provide direct service to the KBU's, i.e. Human Resources, Finance and Budget & Evaluation. KBU (Key Business Units) are departments within the organization that provide direct services to the community, i.e. Solid Waste Services, Fire and Police.

Vacancy Savings: Savings generated by not filling vacant positions, by not filling newly authorized positions, or by filling a vacant position at a lower grade or step.

Related Documents:
FY2007 Fast Facts 

Cost Allocation Plans
FY2006
FY2005
FY2004
FY2003