The Budget: Show Us The Results

As far as I know the city commission goes through a silly exercise in which it compares last year’s proposed budget (let’s say 200-2009) with this year’s new proposed budget 2009-2010).  Then at some point we get a formal accounting report on the results of the year’s spending.  But (again, as far as I know) the city never publishes the 2008-2009 final spending and income results in comparison with the line items of the original approved budget.  Thus the city manager and commission may have been moving monies around from one category to another, from one department to another and from one activity to another. Thus we never know where the monies may be redirected within a given budget period, and those changes are not known by the community.