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Local Governments Today Have an Opportunity to Build Trust: Smarter Digital Transformation is Key

When government doesn’t deliver the same level of digital services citizens have come to expect from their private-sector interactions, they lose an opportunity to build trust in their communities.

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In this episode, we talk with Lou Schiavone, Chief Customer Officer at Avenu Insights and Analytics. For the past 20 years, he has focused on serving state and local governments nationwide, leading the sales, development and delivery of a diverse set of innovative solutions. Our discussion delves into:

  • How governments can instill trust in their communities through digital transformation
  • Government’s overreliance on paper driven processes
  • Tax collection processes that are efficient, digitized, and automated
  • Ways government can improve communication and build trust
  • Key takeaways for government leaders looking to instill trust in their community

This discussion was taken from our show Local Government Insights. If you want to hear more episodes like this one, check us out on Apple, and all your other favorite podcast platforms. Take a moment listen on your favorite platform. We would appreciate your reviews and feedback as we continue to release upcoming episodes.

How Local Governments Can Navigate Budget Shortfalls

Local governments are working harder than ever over the last year to manage budget shortfalls. Changes in revenue can impact key services for the community. Accurate forecasting and revenue maximization is key during these uncertain times.

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In this episode, we talk with Paul Colangelo, the CEO of Avenu Insights and Analytics. He brings a wealth of experience to the conversation having over two decades of experience working with local governments. Our discussion delves into:

  • Untapped revenue for local governments during the economic downturn
  • Conducting a business license discovery and recovery review and how it helps with revenue enhancement
  • Preparing for fluctuations in revenue streams as the economy recovers
  • The long term impacts of the COVID pandemic.

This discussion was taken from our show Local Government Insights. If you want to hear more episodes like this one, check us out on Apple, and all your other favorite podcast platforms. Take a moment listen on your favorite platform. We would appreciate your reviews and feedback as we continue to release upcoming episodes.

How Digital Technology is Giving Old Documents New Life

For local governments, moving beyond fear of digitalization is essential to making their products and services more accessible for constituents.

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In this episode, I talk with Alfredo Frauenfelder, Client Executive at Avenu Insights & Analytics, about how digital technology can give old documents new life and what that process looks like for local governments.

What we discussed:

  • Why preservation of documentation for future generations is critical
  • How to capture, store, and publish handwritten documents
  • The current state of historical documents for most governments
  • What challenges Local Governments face starting these projects
  • How digitalization can actually pay for itself over time

This discussion was taken from our show Local Government Insights. If you want to hear more episodes like this one, check us out on Apple, and all your other favorite podcast platforms. Take a moment listen on your favorite platform. We would appreciate your reviews and feedback as we continue to release upcoming episodes.

Budgeting Sales Tax Revenue

Local governments can fine-tune their budget forecasts by understanding the tremendous impacts that and state and federal programs have had on Sales Tax Revenue over the past year.

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In this episode, we talk with Mark Bryson, Senior Economic Analyst at Avenu, who works with California jurisdictions and is an expert in helping them navigate the changes COVID has brought to revenue forecasts. Our discussion delves into:

  • Key concepts relevant to understanding and properly budgeting for future Sales Tax Revenues
  • Why these basic Sales Tax concepts are important to the budgeting process
  • 5 things that occurred in California that have never happened before that impact Sales Tax Revenue
  • What jurisdictions throughout the country should be thinking about when they are budgeting Sales Tax Revenue these days

This discussion was taken from our show Local Government Insights. If you want to hear more episodes like this one, check us out on Apple, and all your other favorite podcast platforms. Take a moment listen on your favorite platform. We would appreciate your reviews and feedback as we continue to release upcoming episodes.

Budgeting in a Sea of Unknowns

Key takeaways regarding budgeting and how to approach the unknown amid the current COVID-19 crisis

Cities across the country are deep into the preparation of their FY2021 budgets, a job that is difficult in the best of circumstances for both City Managers and Finance professionals. However, under the current pandemic conditions, it is seriously daunting and looks almost impossible. This is particularly true for those jurisdictions preparing multi-year projections. The first challenge is doing the projections at all. The second challenge is working with your elected officials, bargaining groups, and community to accept them!

So how do cities prepare budgets in these radically uncertain times?

The key is the assumptions underlying the numbers. In any crisis management challenge, accurate information is critical. However, the more turbulent and uncertain the environment in which the budget has to be developed, the greater the importance of collecting broad data to support grounding assumptions; and the more critical it becomes for staff to share that supporting data and their related analysis with their elected officials.

That brings us to COVID-19 and the unknowns of the rapidly evolving economic landscape. While all cities currently share the same general uncertainty, each community is, in fact, unique. They are different in size. Their business community mix may be very different than the adjacent communities. Their social priorities may vary widely. Their ability to deliver services, and the type of services they deliver, may differ. Their population may be younger or older than other communities. So, while certain assumptions may apply across all of them, others are going to be unique to each community.

With this in mind, how does each city approach budget development?

There are four areas that any city must now consider when building their FY2021 budgets (particularly when building Year One of a multi-year budget), although how they gather information and the resulting assumptions they make may vary widely:

  1. The Pandemic
  2. The Economic Shutdown
  3. Recovery
  4. Future Planning (Lessons Learned)

Download our recent White Paper: Budgeting in a Sea of Unknowns to read more as we outline ways to approach budgeting in these uncertain times.

 

 

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