I’m at heart a “budget” guy. In the four cities I worked in as an employee (full disclosure, it was over 25 years ago) I was always...

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...

Let’s jump into the “wayback machine” and travel back to 1975 when I was a 23 year old Administrative Analyst (i.e. “punk”) with a fresh...

Many years ago, I audited a city in the San Gabriel Valley area of greater Los Angeles that was especially well-managed. One of the...

If you use a Cost Allocation Plan (CAP) to recover General Fund costs from your Enterprise Funds, then it’s time to start thinking about...

As you probably know, the City of Costa Mesa has pink-slipped nearly half of its employees. Considering that as of yet none of those...

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

In these days of budget angst and woe you may be getting pressure from your elected officials or community to outsource services that are...

Back in 1988, RCS identified two distinct methods for calculating development impact fees (DIFs) and identified them as inductive and...

I’m writing this on March 18, 2011, or seven days after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake rocked Japan followed by a four meter tsunami that...

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

Sometimes I get a bit envious of my partners Rick and Eric. They primarily undertake the operations (fee) service costing and Cost...

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 June 9, 2010 a great breeze was felt throughout California.  No, it was not the Pacific Ocean offshore flow typical of June.  It was a...

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

There are four players in the development game: developers, contractors, land owners and current residents. Each plays a critical role...

As a child I remember a number of instances of being with my Dad and watching magicians pull rabbits out their hat.  I generally found it...

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...