Comprehensive Annual Financial Report FY 2016

Component Units - The City includes four other discretely presented component entities in its report—Greensboro Housing Development Partnership, Inc., the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board (ABC), the Greensboro Transit Authority, and the Redevelopment Commission of Greensboro. The activities of Greensboro Center City Corporation are blended with those of the City. Although legally separate, these “component units” are important because of certain financial transactions that exist between the entities and the City and from extensive board member appointments by City officials. The government-wide financial statements can be found on pages 3-6 of this report. B. Fund Financial Statements The fund financial statements provide more detailed information about the City’s major funds while focusing on fiscal accountability. Funds are accounting devices that the City uses to keep track of specific sources of funding and spending for particular purposes, as required by state law and bond covenants. City Council establishes many funds to assure control as well as good management and to exhibit proper usage of certain taxes and grants. The City of Greensboro, like all other governmental entities in North Carolina, also uses fund accounting to ensure and reflect compliance (or non- compliance) with finance-related legal requirements, such as the General Statutes or City ordinances. The City has three types of funds: Governmental Funds - Most of the City’s basic services are included in governmental funds, which focus on 1) how cash and other financial assets can readily be converted to cash flow in and out (that is, their liquidity) and 2) the balances left at year-end that are available for spending. This is the manner in which the financial budget is typically developed. Because this information provides a short-term view that helps determine whether there are more or fewer financial resources that can be spent in the near future to finance the City’s programs, as opposed to the government-wide statements which provides both a short and a long-term focus, a reconciliation is provided on the page following the fund statements that explains the relationship or differences between the two views. The governmental fund financial statements can be found on pages 7-19 of this report. Proprietary Funds - Services for which the City charges customers a fee are generally reported in proprietary funds. Accounted for like the government-wide statements, proprietary funds provide both long and short-term financial information and in addition include the statement of cash flows. A reconciliation statement is once more provided following these funds to explain the differences between them. The Internal Service Funds are an accounting device used to accumulate and allocate costs internally among the City’s various functions. Because these services predominantly benefit governmental rather than business-type functions, they have been included within governmental activities in the government-wide statements. Individual fund data for the Internal Service Funds is provided in the form of combining statements located on pages 132-139. The proprietary fund financial statements can be found on pages 20-31 of this report. Fiduciary Fund - The City is the trustee, or fiduciary, for the Other Post-Employment (OPEB) Trust Fund, established as an irrevocable trust in FY 2009. The City is responsible for ensuring that the assets reported in this fund are used only for their intended purposes. All of the City’s fiduciary activities are reported in a separate statement of fiduciary net position and a statement of changes in fiduciary net position. We exclude these activities from the government-wide financial statements because the City cannot use these assets to finance its operations. The basic fiduciary fund financial statements can be found on pages 33-34 of this report.

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