Like most cities and counties, maintaining the infrastructure is a major expense. The department is usually the second highest budget item, following Public Safety, and has the largest fixed and consumable inventories and the most diverse responsibilities. Identifying and managing assets and resources in the department could have an immediate and long-term benefit.

Effectively managing infrastructure assets has become even more evident with new reporting requirements. The Government Accounting Standards Board (“GASB”) sets the standards used in auditing city and county accounting records. GASB developed a new standard, called GASB-34, that says taxpayers should be able to know how their tax dollars are spent and all infrastructure assets should be identified, valued and either depreciated or managed under the “Modified Approach”.

The “Modified Approach” is a more realistic approach, according to Laurie Litwin, Teller County Finance Director and Budget Officer. “It does a better job at managing major assets and improves operations”, she said. The “Modified Approach” eliminates the need to depreciate assets, an unrealistic approach for roads, bridges and other long-term assets, and adopts a more proactive, realistic evaluation of infrastructure assets.

The American Public Works Association (APWA) has endorsed the “Modified Approach” and Teller County embraced it. “I can’t see why any County would not use the Modified Approach”, Litwin said. “It requires more effort initially, but the payback is significant”.

The first step in building a GASB-34 compliant maintenance management system is to identify and classify all the assets and resources. Teller County didn’t have a computer system that managed roads, employees, equipment or other items. Information was in a file cabinet, or it didn’t exist at all. Like most counties, Teller County didn’t track every single sign or culvert since the beginning of time. The sign and culvert inventories were incomplete, but that didn’t stop them from implementing CitiTech Management Software (CMS).