304 – Coronavirus Ongoing Management: Planning for Continued Financial Stability
Jon Beckmann, Superintendent of Finance, Waukegan Park District; Jay Lerner, Executive Director, Waukegan Park District; Chris Bamber, Senior Managing Consultant, PFM Solutions LLC
We are currently almost a full year from where the coronavirus began to take an immediate and overwhelming toll on our communities. The business and finance leaders of local governments were met with excruciatingly tough decisions on how to balance the revenue loss and need for expenditure reduction, while still providing public services to its constituents. Now, almost a year later, this session will review this exercise with how Waukegan Park District evaluated its own financial future within the context of the crisis, what measures it put into place to navigate itself through the financial storm, and what this means going forward for the District and its community. The session will cover these topics through the lens of best practices in long-term financial planning on both operations and capital, with practical demonstrations of how Waukegan Park District developed its menu of options to evaluate and employ over the past year.
Learning Outcomes: Participants will be able to:
- Understand how debt and capital expenses and funding play into a continuing operational plan focused on cost management.
- Review the effectiveness of implemented cost reduction measures.