City of St. Helen Receives Distinguished Budget Award for 2024/25

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 8, 2024

St. Helens, Ore. - The City of St. Helens has received a Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) for the City's Fiscal Year (FY) 2024-25 budget.

To receive the budget award, the City of St. Helens was required to satisfy nationally recognized guidelines for an effective budget presentation. The guidelines are designed to assess how well an entity's budget serves as a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide, and a communications device.

Budget documents must be rated proficient in all four categories, and in the 14 mandatory criteria within those categories, to receive the award.

"This marks the twelfth consecutive year that the City of St. Helens has received the Distinguished Budget Award," said St. Helens Finance Director Gloria Butsch. "The criteria for the award changed significantly over the last year and the City's finance staff put in a lot of extra time and energy into assuring the criteria was met. This was in addition to making many other improvements to the budget document which resulted in St. Helens achieving a much higher score over the previous year."

When a Distinguished Budget Presentation Award is granted to an entity, a Certificate of Recognition for Budget Presentation is also presented to the individual(s) or department designated as being primarily responsible for having achieved the award. For the City of St. Helens, this award has been presented to the City's Finance Department.

"All the City departments assisted greatly this year in improving the budget document," said Butsch. "City staff were instrumental in meeting the award criteria which are centered around the budget document being transparent, showing performance management, and being readable."

There are over 1,700 participants in GFOA's Budget Awards Program. The most recent Budget Award recipients, along with their corresponding budget documents, are posted quarterly on GFOA's website, www.gfoa.org. Award recipients have pioneered efforts to improve the quality of budgeting and provide an excellent example for other governments throughout North America.

Government Finance Officers Association advances excellence in government finance by providing best practices, professional development, resources, and practical research for more than 22,500 members and the communities they serve.

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For further information regarding the City of St. Helens budget award, please contact Communications Officer Crystal King at [email protected].

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