Adopted v. Actual Revenue: 2017-2022

After writing this blog post, I realized this isn’t their entire revenue, just the revenue under the general fund. There are 6 other main revenue categories that the City of Arlington tracks. I was thinking about how good Arlington is at estimating their budget.

Every year in their budget report they report 3 types of budgets:

• Actual: report the actual values of the most recent completed yearly budget.
• Estimate: update their estimate of the current yearly budget.
• Adopt: adopt the next year’s yearly budget.

So in the 2020 budget report:

• Actual: They provide the actual dollars for 2019.
• Estimate: update the 2020 budget.
• Adopt: Adopt a 2021 budget.

With all that process, do they get it right?

Referencing Arlington’s city budgets, I compiled the following numbers.

(Red is adopted, blue is actual)

Takeaways:

• Overall: The lack of yearly data makes is hard to draw a first conclusion (only 6 years)
• Decently accurate for the pre-covid years
  • First covid year it was below estimate, understandably
  • Then underestimated in the following years

Questions:

• How has covid changed the budget forecasting?
• Is the 2021 => 2022 rise due to inflation?
• How did expenses compare to revenue?