Project 1 is an individual project designed to demonstrate that you have a basic

Project 1 is an individual project designed to demonstrate that you have a basic understanding of how to read and analyze a ACFR. For this project, you should complete an evaluation of your Working Group City including an evaluation of the city’s fiscal and economic health.
You are the Budget Director for your City. The Mayor has asked you to prepare a briefing, in a memo, on the city’s fiscal and economic condition, including
1) A summary of the City’s historical fiscal condition;
2) highlighting positives and negatives of the city’s fiscal condition;
3) highlighting positives and negatives of the city’s economic condition;
4) recommending any specific areas that need attention, and
5) providing recommendations for the Mayor to consider at the beginning of the Administration.
The Mayor is interested in both the current condition as well as any historical trends that might be helpful in understanding the city’s economic and fiscal condition.
It will be important that you be selective and prioritize the information you include in the Memo to include what you feel is relevant.
You should write your paper based on the information you can obtain from 1) your City’s latest ACFR and 2) external research on fiscal and economic conditions. Frequently, an ACFR does not include information that you feel helps tell the story, be sure to appropriately cite the information’s source.
Project 1 requires that you write a paper of at least seven (7) pages and no more than ten (10) pages in length. Papers should be double spaced, 1″ margins, 10″ font. Please use Chicago Style Manual for formatting citations. The cover page, graphs and charts used in the paper do not count towards the page length requirements.
NOTE: In addition to the Paper, you are asked to submit your completed Budget Analysis Template Spring 2023 Download Budget Analysis Template Spring 2023for your Working Group City. The submitted Checklist DOES NOT count towards your page limit.
The resources available are listed below. You may use any of the various checklists to help you evaluate the data, but you should NOT submit your completion checklist.