Classes I'm Currently Teaching

•  Budgeting for Personal Services (Governmental Budgeting Class 3)

About Me

I’ve worked in various aspects of accounting and budgeting for twenty years and have taught many formal college courses in accounting. After listening to public comments to elected officials for many years, I’ve decided that a more informed electorate is essential for a democracy.

Free Class!

A good introduction to the entire subject of Governmental Budgeting and Finance is the class on How to Read a Government Budget. It’s also the first class in the Governmental Budgeting series. I’ll be offering this class once a month on different days. If you think you might be interested in the subject, and you aren’t sure if I’d be the best teacher of the subject, why not sign up for that class first. Then, when you decide you are interested in the class and my teaching, then sign up for other classes.

Other Classes

Governmental Budgeting Series:

• Coping with the Budgeting Process

Future Planned Courses:

I’ll be creating and offering each of these courses. If you’d like to take one of these classes sooner, let me know and I’ll increase the course’s priority so it gets offered sooner.

Once a course is created, I’ll be offering it regularly. So if you miss it the first time, it will be back.

Governmental Budgeting Series:

• Budgeting for Personal Services
  
• Budgeting for Operating Expenses and Capital Outlay
  
• Defending Budget Proposals
  
• Preparing Revenue Estimates
  
• Understanding the Property Tax
  
• The Capital Budget Process
  
• How to Spend Your Budget Wisely
  
• Multi-year Budgets
  
• Performance Measurement in Local Government

Miscellaneous Topics

These are items that your elected officials should know about (but probably don’t). If you learn them, you can hold your elected official’s feet to the fire.

• Health Care Cost Containment
  
• Tax Increment Financing
  
• Audit Committees
  
• Auditing
  
• Debt Issuance
  
• Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution Retirement Plans
  
• Economic Development
  
• Government Finance
  
• Internal Controls
  
• Multi-year Budgeting
  
• Other Post Employment Benefits
  
• Performance Measurement
  
• Public Retirement Plans
  
• Rating Agency Presentations
  
• Revenue Forecasting
  
• Risk Management
  
• Intergovernmental Service Sharing
  
• Investing
  
• Long Term Financial Planning
  
• Negotiating / Costing Labor Contracts
  
• Competitive Options: From Managed Competition to Privatization

If I missed a topic that you’re interested in, let me know.

Tutoring

With the relatively long list of courses I’m working on, I don’t have any plans on creating courses in Accounting in the near future. However, if you need tutoring, just drop me a line. When asking for a tutoring session, please let me know specifically what you are interested in or need help with. It will make the tutoring session much more efficient. If you include a scan of your text book chapter that you’re having problems with (assuming that it’s a school issue), then the tutoring session will probably be far more effective.

I have a day job during normal working hours in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States of America. I also have teen age daughters which require “Daddy Taxi” duties many evenings. As such, my available hours for tutoring tend to be evenings and weekends.