Our community is forming a new fire board...
We had a meeting last night laying out the likely large capital outlays for the next 15 years. Some of these items are monster ticket, in the 500+K range.
I could lay a out something in a spread sheet, then re do it for each change. But there must be a more elegant solution to the question of how much funding per year is needed to meet projected expenses.
Suggestions?
Yeah, contract out for fire coverage. MUCH less aggravation. As well as being cheaper.
Are you starting from scratch? With new station and equipment and all the rest? If so you are looking at some HUGE money outlays.
There are a number of software packages specific to fire departments out there. Most include budgeting in them. Look at your home state as well. Most have specific rules and paperwork for the fire service and many also have the budgeting layouts available. You just have to add/remove the correct sections based on type of department and equipment used.
No everything existing, just need better long term planning. Costs are rising and we just can't raise property taxes any more. Plus our state gov'mint keeps robbing local revenue streams to pay their bills.
Karl
That makes it somewhat easier. We have the same problem with our depts budget.
The biggest problem is usually the OOPS funding, hard to plan for a failed pump or transfer case problem.
You might look at quicken if you don't need a huge package. I used it for a while till the depts. "secretary" took over and decided on PAPER budgeting !!!!
Several of our town departments have set up Capital Reserve Funds for major repairs and replacements beyond their budget. Usually we grudgingly fund them at town meetings unless the dept heads appear greedy or careless.
They definitely have to be prepared to stand up and defend what they want; the library trustees are particularly deficient at it. I can ask them VERY difficult questions. jsw
Don't know what spreadsheet software you have... but most of them have built in formulas for figuring out financial problems like that. Usually you just have to plug in a few variables like length of loan, interest rate, amount invested...
Run your spreadsheet program and take a look at the help files for formulas. Especially financial, capital budgeting and maybe depreciation.
I just had one other thought...
Would something like GnuCash help?
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