Question

I. You are the Auditor for Winter Valley. You have noticed that the town is recording all transactions in the General Fund. The town has not established any other funds although they have the following activities:

● They are constructing a new City Hall

● They are paying interest and principal on Winter Haven Municipal bonds

● The have established a $3,000,000 endowment fund to fund the maintenance of the town library into perpetuity.

● They have passed a gasoline tax surcharge to fund the planting of flower beds on the sides of central highway.

Required: Prepare a one to two page memo explaining the following:

1. The reasons governments must establish funds.

2. The accounting method and measurement focus used by the governmental funds.

3. The purpose of the General fund 4. An explanation of the additional funds which need to be established to more accurately account for the activities of Winter Valley to assure appropriate accounting and budgetary control.

● II. Write a one page critical analysis of the following article:

Chicago’s Murder Problem By FORD FESSENDEN and HAEYOUN PARK MAY 27, 2016 Chicago police officers at a crime scene in Greater Grand Crossing, one of the city’s most violent neighborhoods, where a 13-year-old boy was shot in both legs in April. There was a time when it looked as if Chicago would follow New York and Los Angeles into a kind of sustained peace. Then progress stalled in 2004, and the city has been through some harrowing years leading up to another alarming spike in homicides this year. \ Already embroiled in a crisis over race and police conduct, Chicago now faces a 62 percent increase in homicides. Through mid-May, 216 people have been killed. Shootings also are up 60 percent. So what’s going on in Chicago? It’s complicated, but a comparison with New York is a good place to start. Both cities began the 1990s with historically high homicide rates; both have diverse populations, including large numbers of blacks, Hispanics and whites, and a wide range of economic fortune as well. Chicago has about the same population as Brooklyn, but a year’s worth of homicides in the two places shows an astonishing difference in the toll. Guns Are a Key Difference People who know both cities say there are some significant differences in policing, especially around the issue of guns. The homicide rate in Chicago is just a little higher than in New York when guns aren’t involved. But when it comes to shootings, both fatal and not, Chicago stands out, suggesting a level of armed interaction that isn’t happening in New York. Chicago has a reputation for strict gun laws, and gun rights advocates often point to it as proof that gun regulation doesn’t reduce violence. But its laws aren’t what they used to be: Federal courts struck down its ban on handgun ownership in 2010, and its ban on gun sales in 2014. And a New York Times analysis showed guns were easily available from nearby jurisdictions, especially Indiana. About This Project And Chicago is more lenient about illegal handguns than New York, prescribing a one-year minimum for possession versus three and a half years in New York. An attempt to match the New York law in 2013 was rejected by the Illinois legislature out of concern for skyrocketing incarceration rates for young black men. New York also hired a lot more police officers in response to the crime of the 1990s, and, during its stop-and-frisk era of the 2000s, steeply increased gun enforcement. Recent studies, including one that looked at increased police presence in London after a terrorist attack, have suggested more police might mean less crime, said Jens Ludwig, the director of Crime Lab at the University of Chicago, which studies crime in both Chicago and New York. Chicago’s Police Department, overwhelmed, can respond only to the most serious problems, leaving citizens to feel responsible for their own security, he said. “Everyone has to establish deterrence on a retail basis,” he said. “People carry guns in public because other people are carrying guns. It’s literally an arms race, a vicious cycle. There are lots of indications that New York City, by taking guns more seriously and hiring more officers, has gotten a lot of guns off the streets, creating a virtuous cycle.” Gang Wars in Chicago Drive Much of Its Violence In Chicago, gang disputes are clearly a big part of homicides, said John Hagedorn, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who studies Chicago gangs. “But these are not the same kind of disputes as before – they’re more localized disputes.” Many of Chicago’s gangs have fractured, leading to more violence, said Arthur Lurigio, a criminology professor at Loyola University Chicago. While Latino gangs have remained more hierarchical, black gangs have splintered into small, disparate factions, whose disputes are less over territory and profits, and more over personal insults or shames, often fueled by social media, he said. “Young people are making a lot of indirect threats toward cliques and rival gangs that are being interpreted as being threatening,” said Desmond Patton, a professor at Columbia University who has studied violence on social media. “Tagging is the conversation starter that could lead to someone getting a gun.” In addition to making threats, individuals at times post their location on social media to prove to rivals that they’re tough, he said. In one well-known instance, Gakirah Barnes, a Chicago gang member who was rumored to have killed or shot up to 20 rival gang members, referenced an address she frequented on Twitter. In the tweet, provided by Dr. Patton, Ms. Barnes says “Lz,” which has multiple meanings in Chicago gang cultures, including living life, at address number 6347. Later that day, she was shot and killed near the address. Tweet from Gakirah Barnes’s account Gangs figure in many homicides in New York as well, but recent polls by The New York Times suggest that the gang problem may be worse in Chicago. Although there were differences in the way the polls were conducted, blacks and Hispanics in Chicago expressed significantly less hope than their counterparts in New York that their children would escape gang life. New York City Dr. Hagedorn also points out that though the city also has a lot of Latino gang members, Chicago’s violence is much higher among African-Americans. Three quarters of all homicide offenders and victims are black, he said. “The shootings today are more spontaneous over day-to-day humiliations of youthful African-Americans,” he said. Crime Persists in Chicago’s Most Segregated Neighborhoods Whether exacerbated by gangs or guns, though, Chicago’s killings are happening on familiar turf: Its poor, extremely segregated neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. And many say that is Chicago’s real violence issue. “Where do gangs come from? They tend to take root in the very same neighborhoods that drive these other problems,” said Robert J. Sampson, a professor at Harvard and the author of “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect.” “You can’t divorce the gang problem from the problem of deep concentrations of poverty.” “What predicts violent crime rates is concentrated poverty and neighborhood disadvantage, and what determines concentrated poverty is high levels of black segregation combined with high levels of black poverty,” said Douglas S. Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton University. In Chicago, homicide rates correspond with segregation. While many areas have few or no killings, the South and West Sides are on par with the world’s most dangerous countries, like Brazil and Venezuela, and have been for many years. STATEN ISLAND But segregation in New York is nothing like in Chicago: The perfectly isolated neighborhood – where every man, woman and child is the same race – is rare in New York. Less than one percent of the population lives in such areas, and most of them are white. In Chicago, 12 percent of the black population is in a census block group that is 100 percent black. Racially segregated minority neighborhoods have a long history of multiple adversities, such as poverty, joblessness, environmental toxins and inadequate housing, Professor Sampson said. In these places, people tend to be more cynical about the law and distrust police, “heightening the risk that conflictual encounters will erupt in violence.” “The major underlying causes of crime are similar across cities, but the intensity of the connection between social ills and violence seems to be more persistent in Chicago,” Professor Sampson said. “You don’t get that kind of extensive social and economic segregation in many other cities.” Sources: nyc.gov; City of Chicago Data Portal; Andrew Beveridge, socialexplorer.com; ​Federal Bureau of Investigation; Los Angeles Police Department; Bureau of Justice Statistics; New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation Chicago poll; NYT-Siena NY poll. Write a one page critical analysis of the preceding article.

Answer 1

As i am the auditor I suggest that winter wally must not route all the transaction thru general fund. in order to make proper accounting and proper analysis winter wally must route and create transaction thru different funds, for example in order to construct building , winter wally must establish building fund , all the incoming and ouutgoing must be routed thru building fund . in case of seperate building fund winter wally is in position to better plan , excess or shortfall may be routed thru general fund.

as far as winter heaven municipal bond are concerned , first one have to check the purpose for which bonds are issued , in case if not for aparticular purpose there is not requirement of seperate fund , winter wally may record in the books that Bank account Dr to Bonds account and in case of payment bonds account dr , interest account dr andcredit bank account.

out of the endowement fund winter wally can manage payment of maintenance etc, receipt towards maintenance , credited in to endowement fund account and payment towards maintenance will be routed thru endowment fund account .

gasline tax surcharge collected to fund particular expenses nay be routed thru particular fund. in case if not for specific purpose that can be accounted as bank account dr to surcharge collection and any payment made is dr expenses account and credit bank account.

Ans -1 Purpose of seperate fund : as stated herein above seperate fund will help proper head wise accounting , profit or loss of particular activity , excess /short coming can be plan properly .

Ans 2 : The accounting method should be on the cash basis as entery only after receipt of amount in case of government agency , however in case of expenses and receipt where is certain to receive in future on the basis of mercantile system.

ans : 3 Genearl fund is used for all the transaction other than fund created for specific purpose, any short fall /excess will be routed thru general fund.

ans 4 - specific fund may be Building fund , sainatary fund , etc , or if any specific seperate activity than fund as per that particular activity.