Raftelis staff have served as the Interim Chief Financial Officer for the City of Dayton (City) Utility Department. This role included financial reporting, operating and capital budgeting, organizational assessment and operational improvements. We assisted the City reorganized financial reporting responsibility for several departments designed to provide improved financial management of expenditures and budget to actual reporting and improved accounting for Lime Kiln Operations. We also assisted the City update policies and procedures for: operating and capital budgets; billing and collection; asset capitalization policy; improved payment processing procedures and five-year capital improvement planning.
Raftelis staff has also assisted the City develop long-term financial proformas and financial plans that have supported the issuance of revenue bonds to fund water and sewer capital needs. We have also prepared rate studies, cost-of-service evaluations, a benchmarking and competitiveness assessment, and served as a financial advisor for inter-municipal agreement negotiations to assist the City in generating sufficient revenues to fund its operations and capital plans, and to recover costs in a fair and equitable manner.
We completed cost-of-service studies to assist the City develop long-term financial plans, update its user fees, identify the cost of providing service to outside-city jurisdictions, and develop cost allocations for inside- and outside jurisdictions. These efforts included completing cost allocations for administrative and shared services departments, preparation of forecasts of revenues, and expenses, financial planning and cost-of-service models, and developing projected user charge schedules. Financial planning and cost-of-service models were provided to the City for their future use.
We completed a benchmarking and competitiveness assessment for the City of Dayton organization to identify opportunities for improvement. This effort included gathering and analyzing financial and operational data from Dayton and from other similarly sized utilities across the country, developing and comparing financial and operational metrics for these utilities and comparing the results to Dayton Water. The results of this effort were summarized and shared with the City and its suburban jurisdictional customers.
Raftelis assisted the City in supporting negotiations for a long-term contract with Dayton’s suburban customers. The work entailed updating an agreement pricing model, providing extensive education and outreach to suburban customers regarding industry standard pricing methodologies, developing and documenting appropriate cost allocation methods, evaluating various pricing scenarios, and assisting in preparation of the inter-municipal agreement language.
