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Citizens' Budget Capital Improvements Budget (CIB) Previous Web Sites
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Citizen's Guide to the Metro Budget Your Budget at Work It’s obviously impossible to capture in any one place everything that your local government, the Metropolitan Government of Nashville & Davidson County, does. Instead, included here you will find just a few highlights of significant accomplishments from the current budget year. These are accomplishments in support of Nashville’s Priorities:
These highlights provide snapshots of how your Metro Government is working to address each of Nashville’s Priorities. We hope you’ll find them interesting enough to want to learn more – and this Metro Government website is a great place to start. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions about “Your Budget at Work” – or about any part of the Citizens’ Guide to the Metro Budget – please let us know. You can contact us by sending an email to omb@nashville.gov. We depend on you to let us know how we can make this information more useful. Learn About the Budget A budget is the financial plan for a person or an organization, such as the city of Nashville, that defines how it will raise and spend money, and what it will achieve with it. For example, your home budget lays out where your money comes from -- your wages or other income -- and what you will spend it on -- food, shelter, transportation, clothes, and so on. For a government, the budget is more than just a plan. It is also legal document that authorizes that government to raise and spend the money it needs to operate. Since we live in a democracy, it's really YOUR authorization, through your elected representatives, for the government to spend your money to provide public services for you and your neighbors. American federal, state, and local governments define their budget processes through laws. They also generally divide up who does what in the budget process. This is one part of the "separation of powers" we learn about in civics class. In Nashville, the law that defines the budget process is the Metro Charter. It says that we prepare a budget for one year at a time. It says that year, the "fiscal year," starts on July 1 and ends the following June 30. It says that the budget for that fiscal year cannot spend more money than it generates. It says that the executive branch of government -- the Mayor and his officials -- prepares the budget by May 25. It gives the Council the power to approve or amend the budget, but requires that a budget be passed by June 30. It empowers the various operating departments, agencies, and offices of the government to collect and spend the money throughout the fiscal year to provide services; but it also says they do so under the control and oversight of the Finance Department. Finally, it says that an independent accountant must audit the government at the end of each year, and that the audit report must be publicly published. That's the big picture. Each of the links below provides more information about the various parts of Metro’s budget process. We hope you find them helpful, and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions or comments. Citizens' Guide Home Page | View Flash Version | View HTML Version OMB Home | Finance Home | Metro Home | Department List Comments, suggestions, or error reports |
What's New... Misc Mayor's Hearing Schedule, 2005 Council Hearing Schedule, 2005 Presentation Budget Presentation (streaming video) Mayor's Remarks for Metro 2005 Budget Presentation Finance Director's Budget Presentation Ordinances Details Summary of Departmental Adjustments - Schedule I Summary of Budget Adjustments for Administrative Accounts - Schedule II Detailed Summary of Budget Adjustments - Schedule III Detailed Summary of Budget Reductions Not Included in the Proposed Budget - Schedule IV I Want To... Read about the Timeline for the Budget Process View the 2004 - 2005 Operating Budget Book (29 MB)* *Note: This file is in PDF format. You may need Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 to view this file. To download the latest version of this program, click the image below.
Quick Links Council Meetings in Streaming Video |
