FAIRHOPE, Ala. — One of the most important accomplishments of Fairhope’s municipal government during the past year was the establishment of the Financial Advisory Committee, according to a majority of City Council members.

All three council members contacted — Council President Lonnie Mixon, Councilman Rick Kingrea and Councilman Dan Stankoski — put the formation of that committee among the three or four top achievements of city government in 2009, with important long-term benefits to the city in the year to come and beyond. The other two council members could not be reached by press time.

“We now have all the department heads involved with the budget process,” said Mixon, who played an active role in the committee’s work since its appointment by the council in July. “It isn’t just the council or the mayor coming up with the mayor. The department heads are active participants in the process.”

The committee includes several local business professionals, accountants and lawyers, as well as Mayor Tim Kant, and all members of the council. City Administrator Gregg Mims is a regular attendee of the meetings, which occur on the fourth Monday of each month prior to the council meeting that day.

“The establishment of the FAC has given us some control of the budgeting and resources of the city, and it’s helping us identify those things that we need to work on and look toward the future,” Kingrea said. “It’s really the first time in my understanding that the department heads have been actively involved in the budgeting process. I think now with the help of the FAC that we have a better sense of what the needs of the individual departments are, and I think that’s a real plus.”

The committee is chaired by Chuck Zunk, who is also chair of the Fairhope Airport Authority and led a different committee effort in 2007 that resulted in the establishment of a strategic planning process for the city and submitted its first interim strategic plan to the council last year.

Zunk said the primary result of the committee during its first six months has been to help integrate the city’s first strategic plan into the finances of the city and its overall planning.

“I think it’s also breaking ground on improving communications among the council, mayor and department heads as far as how actual planning and allocation of financial resources is being done. I think it’s a real positive step in terms of improving communications all through the city.”

The committee conducted two days of budget hearings in August prior to the adoption by the council of the city budget for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1. The council then charged the committee with helping to implement the budget by reviewing and making recommendations regarding the city’s quarterly financial statements, as well as routing non-budgeted appropriation requests through the committee prior to consideration by the council.

The committee is expected to conduct its initial review of the city’s first quarter financial statements at its February meeting. The first quarter ended in December, and the city’s financial staff will be presenting the financial reports to the council in January.

“The goal there is to understand the trends that have developed during the first quarter and how they may be different from what we anticipated in the budget,” Zunk said. “We are going to expect differences between actual numbers compared to what we thought in the budget. Every quarter when we do our analysis, if we find any unfavorable trends that were not anticipated, we’ll still have time before the end of the fiscal year to suggest ways and means to improve performance in that area. Saying it in different terms, if there’s going to be a problem, the sooner you find out about it the better, so that you can fix the problem.”

During the past few years and especially during the municipal election season of 2008, some candidates and observers raised questions about city finances and the reporting process. Zunk said the budget hearings last summer and the work of the committee during the latter half of 2009 may have had a constructive impact on those perceptions.

“By its nature, because of the way city accounting is done to meet accounting standards,there is a certain complexity to it that is difficult to understand,” Zunk said. “One of the goals of our committee is to help with that understanding by getting that deep knowledge where we can help the council members, and hopefully the general public, gain a better appreciation of what those statements really mean. And I think we are gaining ground on that. I think the budget process helped immensely because it stripped away some feelings, many of which I felt were misplaced, that people were trying to hide things, which is not the case. But we got everything out in the open, and everybody had a chance to talk about it and ask questions.”

The committee’s upcoming analysis of the city’s first quarter’s financial reports, and every quarter thereafter, will also provide an opportunity for promoting those goals of the committee, he said.

“Especially as we go forward with these quarterly reports, I think those will go a long way toward helping the council members, and hopefully the general public, gain an appreciation of the finances,” Zunk said. “It’s our job on the committee to help translate some of that information into user-friendly remarks, as well as draw attention to the city’s priority financial items and help people understand them.”