Caledon Council congratulated Finance and Communications staff jointly on receiving the Popular Annual Financial Reporting Award (PAFR) for 2012 from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). Popular annual financial reports can play an important role in making financial information accessible to ordinary citizens and other interested parties. Caledon is the first Ontario municipality in recent years to have received all three prestigious finance awards from the GFOA in one submission year:
2013 Distinguished Budget Award
2012 CAnFR Award
2012 PAFR Award
The GFOA is a non-profit professional association serving 18,000 government finance professionals throughout North America. The award was established in 1991 to encourage and assist governments in extracting information from their comprehensive annual financial report to produce high quality popular annual financial reports specifically designed to be readily accessible and easily understandable to the general public and others without a background in public finance. Eligible reports are reviewed by four judges, who complete an evaluation form specifically designed for this purpose.
The judge’s evaluation form comprises five categories that are given varying weights of importance toward the overall final grade – reader appeal (10%); understandability (25%); distribution methods (7.5%) and other (e.g. creativity, notable achievement) (7.5%). The remaining 50% of the score is based upon overall quality and usefulness of the report, taking into consideration the four previous categories. Judges are never selected from the same province or state as the PAFR being reviewed or from the same firm that performed the independent audit of the CAnFR.
Canadian governments that wish to participate in the PAFR program must either:
Have received the GFOA’s Canadian Award for Excellence in Financial Reporting (CAnFR) for the annual financial report of the previous year, or
Ultimately receive the GFOA’s CAnFR for the current year.
“I congratulate and thank our staff in the Corporate Services Department and the Communications section for their high level of customer service on behalf of the municipality,” said Mayor Marolyn Morrison. “I am extremely proud of their accomplishments. To win all three GFOA awards is simply outstanding!”
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Congratulations to the Finance and Communications team!