Coppell City Council receives overview of Five-Year Forecast

By Arianna Morrison
StarLocalMedia

Coppell City Council met on Tuesday, April 11 to receive an overview of the city’s Five-Year Forecast (FYF), which gave councilmembers a first look at what they will see during the budget process.

The primary purpose of the FYF is to be an internal tool used by staff to prepare for the future. Secondary purposes include educating citizens and employees regarding long-term planning and its use by the rating agencies to evaluate the future financial health of the city. The FYF has four sections: introduction, financial analysis, citizen engagement, and the appendix.

“We use the information to create strategies concerning timing of funding needed to accomplish the programs and projects included in the forecast,” said Kim Tiehen, director of strategic financial engagement for the City of Coppell.

Participants in the FYF begin with council and citizens. Council sets policy and provides direction on the tax rate and projects, while citizens provide input on Vision 2040, citizen appearance, and emails to council and staff. All participants approach the process with a future-oriented mindset.

Other participants include the city manager and directors. The city manager communicates council’s policies and directions, sets expectations, and encourages strategic and visionary thinking. Directors for the city support the city manager and help develop requests. Assistant directors also play a role in developing and utilizing the prioritization matrix, reviewing all requests and recommending what to include and exclude, and present the recommendations and strategies to leadership.

The strategic financial engagement department facilitates collaboration and conversations, performs revenue projections, researches and provides price lists for supplies and services used city-wide, and then the budget division prepares the FYF document.

“The Five-Year Forecast process is kicked off in September with the assistant directors,” Tiehen said. “They discuss the prior year process and any suggested changes to the process are included in the instructions that are shared city-wide in October. We check in with the (assistant directors) and the departments in November to find out about their progress and if they have any questions and then expenditure summaries and prioritizations matrices are all due in December.”

In January, the assistant directors review and work together to identify strategies, which are presented to the city manager’s office. In February, the assistant directors meet to go over any feedback from the city manager’s office and in March, a rough draft of the FYF is due. In April, the document is finalized, a presentation to city council occurs, along with a presentation to employees.

Council did not make an action on the document at the meeting on April 11.