I love the expression “Accountants just want to have fun.” When the accountant is also a consultant, the “fun” can mean enjoying the...

As local governments pull themselves out of the rubble of the recession and revenues slowly start to increase, there is now an important...

I noticed the other day that some of the groups I’ve joined on LinkedIn are discussing benchmarking. I went through my benchmarking phase...

Lately, there seems to be some confusion about the difference between Capital Impact Fees and Operational Service fees and the rules...

A young girl calls the police while hiding in a closet to say that her father has just killed her mother and is looking for her to kill...

There is a favorite game being played today called “Catch the Fee that’s Really a Tax.” This game is played by many well-intentioned...

Often times during public hearings a Council member will opine that fees are the same as taxes.  I then feel the need to offer a...

In October of 2009, I wrote an article about what Firefighters could teach Police Officers. Thanks to an article in the Los Angeles Times...

Will I calculate service costs based on a single unit of service? Yes, but I don’t like to. It’s often hard to make the case for...

We are living in a time of change. Redevelopment Agencies in their current form have disappeared. No one knows what the State budget will...

When our company started doing cost of services studies in the early 1980’s, it was routinely suggested that 50% of animal control costs...

As cities look farther and deeper for additional revenue, some cities have started charging for emergency response to accident scenes....

One of the many nice features of our capitalist system is the ability to vote with our dollars to get the products that we want in the...

On the California ballot this fall is Proposition 26, which proposes to redefine many current fees at the statewide and local level as...

Statement 34 was adopted with much fanfare by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) in June of 1999. By the end of 2004,...

One of the advantages of seniority is that you can see how local government has changed over the years. One of the dramatic changes that...

Last month, the Fourth District of the State Court of Appeals ruled in Weisblat v. City of San Diego, that fees collected for the primary...

This discussion is for the end-user water supplier that is not subsidized with tax dollars. You are about to start a dance that may take...

In the early 1980s, we pioneered the use of the Franchise Fee as a fee for the use of a city’s rights-of-way by the municipal utilities....

I got a call recently from a California city interested in consultants that did long-range financial plans (LRFP). I couldn’t remember...