Chattanooga Field Trip

On April the 12th the governmental accounting students visited the city of Chattanooga financial office on a field trip. The reason for the trip was for us students to have an insight and better understanding about governmental accounting concepts and principles and also so that we can have better perspective on what a career in the government sector entails.

We arrived at city hall at 10:00am Tuesday morning and filed into the building, after checking through security we were ushered into a conference room where we were introduced to the chief of staff Dan Johnson and Daisy Madison city's finance officer, who gave us a warm welcome

Next we were give a tour of the city hall specifically the mayor's office and a brief history about the many historic artifact in the building by Ms. Anita Ebersole the deputy mayor. Ms Ebersole went further in to details by showing us clothes worn in the last century by residents, contents of the time capsule that was dunged up such as gins and snuff.

The next phase was an educative workshop where I learnt a lot about the city's fund structure. I learnt that the city has a special revenue fund that collects money from the state of Tennessee for road repairs, that they have 26 funds. Also more light was shed on budget control; control at the city is at the department level with override authority by CFO Within the fund level.

The city's budget is monitored through online access to financial information by the department, monthly expenditure and revenue forecast beginning at the end of the 1st quarter of operations, quarterly "chattresults" meetings with departments conducted by finance administration and constant monitory by budget and management analyst.

We were served an amazing lunch, were we had an opportunity to talk and pick a little of Ms. Madison's brain, she enlightened us about reasons she believed the economy crashed such as how bankers allowed people to get mortgages they can't afford, and how this in turn lead to people losing their home and not having money to spend which greatly affected the tax revenue which brought about the economy down fall. She encouraged us to work hard and in school and keep up good grades. She spoke to us about trials of finding a job and challenges you face once you have one. This was my favorite part of the day talking to her made me realize that regardless of how difficult school felt the reward for it was much greater.

The whole experience opened my eyes to what life as a public accountant would be like. I always saw myself as someone who would end up being an auditor in Ernst and young or any of the big four but going on the field trip and interacting with the accountants has made me realize that I could just be as happy working