Assignment: Application: Assessing Financial Condition

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The regular evaluation of an organization’s finances goes a long way toward establishing trust with stakeholders, such as tax payers, board members, clients, patrons, and funding agencies. Just as financial planning and budgeting are integral parts of an organizations success, financial audits and evaluations are vital parts of the functioning of an organization. Evaluating the financial condition of an organization involves determining whether it has the revenue from taxes, fees, and other sources to meet its needs as well as if its assets exceed its liabilities. Assessing the financial condition is really just an analysis of the city’s financial health.

In this Assignment, discuss the city in which you live and then evaluate its financial condition and opportunities for growth by addressing the bulleted statements below. Be sure to first review your readings and then research additional resources to assist in your evaluation. For example, it is helpful to examine available data and other public documents for that city. These resources are useful and should be incorporated into your paper, but remember that those resources do not count as scholarly (peer-reviewed, academic articles and texts).

To complete:

Write a 6- to 8-page paper (not including title page and reference page) that addresses the following:

Describe your local city or county entity. Include descriptive information as population, trends, and other important demographical information. (1 page)
Look at the largest source of taxes in the city, which could include sales tax, property tax or income tax. Is your entitys revenue and expenditures balanced? Why or why not? In your assessment, consider the following three factors: amount of revenue that the entity is collecting, the percentage of total revenue contributed by sales tax, how much the city is spending. (2 pages)
Consider these six important factors that impact city revenue: Deterioration of revenue base, internal procedures or policies that may adversely affect revenue yields, over-dependence on obsolete or external revenue sources, changes in tax burden, poor revenue estimating practices, and inefficiency in the collection and administration of revenues. Select two that apply to your city, and then evaluate how these impact your city. (1- 2 pages)
You propose to increase city tax revenue, and you know from your course readings that price elasticity and demand are important considerations. Understanding the characteristics of your city, evaluate whether the following three tax increase options would be effective assuming all would be legally possible: 1) a .5% increase in sales tax, 2) a 3% increase in restaurant tax, and 3) a 5% increase in tourism tax. In your evaluation, consider price elasticity and positive and negative externalities for each type of tax.This is where knowing your city and its major sources of revenue are especially important. (1 1 1/2 pages)
As part of your conclusion, provide one recommendation to improve the citys financial health. Examples may include (but are not limited to) the need to shift public or customer service priorities or a need to shift policies because of a loss of competitive position. Be creative one suggestion may be to research examples of other similar cities and determined what changes have worked for them. (1/2 – 1 page)
Use proper APA formatting and include the following:

A title page and running head
An introduction that states the purpose of the paper
Level 1 headings to define each part (bullet) of the paper
A conclusion to synthesize the entire paper
A minimum of three additional scholarly sources to support your paper
In-text citations as appropriate
A reference list

Discussion: Analyzing Financial Reports

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Financial reports tell the story of an organization within a fiscal year. Annual financial reports are extremely valuable to government organizations because they give both the administrators in the organization and the public who are funding the organization a sense of where revenue is going.

In this Discussion, you analyze an organization’s comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) and explain its value to the organization.

Review this weeks Learning Resources and reflect on the responsibility of government organizations to provide accurate financial reports to the public. Then, select a public organization and a specific CAFR from the selected organization. Public organization budgets are required by law to be available. An Internet search will yield an annual budget for your specific organization.

With these thoughts in mind:

By Day 4
Post a brief description of the organization you selected. Then, provide an analysis of that organizations CAFR. In your analysis, explain what the report tells the stakeholders of the organization and the value of the report to the organization.

Be sure to support your posting and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources.

game sound track

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Soundtrack Analysis.

    Students should select a video game of their choice, and write an essay analyzing the games soundtrack.  This should include a broad overview of the soundtrack in its entirety and an in-depth analysis of one specific track.  What elements make the game feel like it has a single, coherent soundtrack, as opposed to fifteen pieces of music?  What is the soundtrack doing in the context of the video game?  How (if at all) does it speak differently to longtime players vs. new players of the game genre from which it hails?

    This essay should be at least 1,000 words and no more than 1,500 words in length.

Discussion: Obstacles to Strategic Financial and Fiscal Planning

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Discussion: Obstacles to Strategic Financial and Fiscal Planning
Every organization, including governments, must survive in an environment full of opportunities and threats. Governments must find ways around threats and take advantage of opportunities that arise. Complicating the existence of government organizations is the fact that they are open systems that are affected by both external and internal forces. External forces include economic or political opportunities and obstacles. Internal forces relate to human resource strengths or weaknesses, or other inherent conditions of the organization.

In this Discussion, you focus on internal and external factors that may affect the development of a successful strategic financial plan in a government organization.

Review this weeks Learning Resources. Then, select a public organization and consider how what you read about factors affecting strategic financial planning relates to this specific organization.

With these thoughts in mind:

By Day 4
Post a brief description of the government organization you selected. Then, explain the internal and external factors that might impede the development of a successful financial strategic plan. Provide examples of at least two internal factors and one external factor, and explain how they could impact the organization. Then, identify how these obstacles may be overcome.