SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — For more than three decades, the quality of this coastal city’s financial reporting continues to be award-worthy.
This week, the City of South Padre Island received a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting.
The city received the certificate for its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR).
This is the 31st consecutive year the city has received this award.
The certificate was given to the city by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA), which is a nonprofit professional association that serves nearly 21,000 government finance professionals throughout North America.
According to a press release from city officials, the award represents a significant accomplishment and reflects the commitment of the city council and staff to meeting the highest principles of financial reporting.
“This is a great representation of the City of South Padre Island Finance Department’s commitment to achieve the highest levels of transparency and financial reporting for more than 30 years,” SPI Chief Financial Officer Rodrigo Gimenez stated. “This is truly a joint effort of our team, which works hard year-round to share accurate financial information to our stakeholders.”
According to GFOA’s website, the association established the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Program (COA) in 1945.
It was created to encourage and assist state and local governments to go beyond minimum requirements of accounting principles and prepare annual comprehensive financial reports that are transparent.
The program was also created as a way to recognize individual governments that succeed in achieving that goal.
According to GFOA officials, the goal of the program isn’t to assess the financial health of participating governments, but rather to ensure that users of their financial statements have the information they need to do so themselves.
