Public Management Group - Urban Futures, Inc.

Practical Solutions based on Executive Government Experience

What differentiates us from our peers is an innovative approach to providing comprehensive services, making UFI a “one-stop shop” for financial solutions. With over 75 years of experience in both local government leadership and private finance, our Public Management Group brings a dynamic blend of technical and practical approaches to public financial management. Our technical experience in financial modeling and analytics provides unique insights into your revenues, expenses, liabilities, fiscal challenges and strategic opportunities. We marry these technical insights with our local government executive experience to formulate practical solutions that work in your policy context and recommendations that can be understood by your Council or Board for informed decision-making.

The Public Management Group delivers a range of solutions:

Long-term Forecasts and Custom Financial Models
Fiscal Reviews & Sustainability Plans
Pension and OPEB Liability Management
Asset Management and Deal Structuring

Evaluation of Revenue Options & Opportunities
Strategic Planning and Special Studies
Financial Management Policy Development and Training

Financial Forecasting Services

UFI uses a budget/income statement approach to develop our model and produces a long-term forecast of an agency’s baseline financial condition given its current structure, operations, and projected service demands. To the extent possible and available, UFI will work to use actual, operational, salary, benefit, OPEB and pension data and projections. The analytical capacity of the model will include scenario evaluation capability that allows agencies to assess the impact of various future financial scenarios on the baseline fiscal forecast.

We deliver a customized Excel-based user-friendly forecast model that can be used for making key strategic financial decisions, including budgeting, evaluation of rate increases, capital investments, and financing options. These metrics are designed to help tell the story of the current and future fiscal condition in understandable terms to policymakers, stakeholders and the general public.

Pension/OPEB Management Services

Our goal is to assist our clients in developing an effective strategy to address their rising retirement costs. UFI has experience in solving California agencies’ pension issues, having established a pension working group in 2017 with a number of local agency representatives, actuaries, and CalPERS representatives. UFI’s proprietary model creates amortization schedules for each Amortization Base, which enables each agency to implement “targeting strategies” to meet its desired financial objectives.

Targeting Strategies serve as a guiding principle for the implementation of the following financing strategies:

- Tax-Exempt Exchange
- Synthetic/Soft Fresh Start
- Pension Obligation Bonds (POBs)

UFI can also assist with quantitative assessments to be used during negotiations with bargaining units and we can propose cost saving measures to reduce retiring medial “OPEB” costs.