On August 30, 2021, the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) announced that the City of Cocoa received the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for its Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 Adopted Budget document. This prestigious honor represents a significant achievement and reflects the commitment of the City and staff to meeting the highest principles of governmental budgeting. This is the 3rd year in a row that the city has received this recognition. It is also a year when the City utilized a new, more comprehensive and user friendly online budget presentation tool, ClearGov.
In order to receive the budget award, the City had to satisfy nationally recognized guidelines for effective budget presentation that assess how well an entity’s budget serves as a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide and a communications device. Budget documents must be rated “proficient” in all four categories, and in the fourteen mandatory criteria within those categories, to receive the award. Cocoa’s budget document received ten outstanding remarks from the independent reviewers.
“I commend the city staff for always working towards the highest standards and achieving this success. It is an honor to represent a community that is so dedicated to providing quality, transparent and accurate budget documentation to our residents,” said Mayor Michael C. Blake, Mayor of the City of Cocoa.
There are over 1,700 participants in the Budget Awards Program and the most recent award recipients are posted quarterly on GFOA’s website (www.gfoa.org). Award recipients have pioneered efforts to improve the quality of budgeting and provide an excellent example for other governments throughout North America.
The Government Finance Officers Association is a major professional association servicing the needs of nearly 21,000 appointed and elected local, state, and provincial-level government officials and other finance practitioners.
“This is truly an exciting honor to have received this prestigious recognition for the third year in a row. Our staff is committed to providing the highest quality documentation that offers open and transparent information for our citizens,” said Cocoa’s Finance Director, Rebecca Bowman.
To view the FY2021 budget document, visit our website at www.CocoaFL.org/174/Finance.
