What Strategic Wynns does

Budget & Financial Management

Practical financial management for organizations that need the numbers to work, from a budget due on a hard deadline to the systems that keep it honest all year.

• Budget preparation and balancing: revenues, expenditures, funds, staffing costs, capital needs, and year-end projections, built to meet budget deadlines in any state
• Monthly budget-to-actual reporting packages for boards, councils, and management
• Payroll and shared cost allocations across funds and departments, using a reasonable and consistently applied methodology
• Forecasting and long-range financial planning tied to capital needs and funding capacity
• Financial cleanup: delinquent audits, recovery after an emergency, and rebuilt controls after turnover

Rate, Fee & Utility Planning Studies

Rates are where the numbers meet real life: the bill a household opens, the water a business counts on, the budget a board has to approve. When costs rise, the people paying those bills deserve to see why. We build rate studies that cover real costs, hold up in public, and give decision makers solid ground and ratepayers a straight answer.

• Revenue requirement analysis: what the system genuinely needs to collect, year by year
• Cost-of-service allocation: what each customer class actually costs to serve
• Rate structure design: base charges, volumetric rates, tiers, and conservation pricing
• Long-range cash flow models commonly covering twenty years of operating costs, capital timing, grants, borrowing terms, reserves, and consumption changes
• Prioritized capital schedules, developed in coordination with operations staff and the system’s engineer
• Impact fees, tap fees, and system development charges, structured under the law that applies in your state
• Benchmarking against comparable systems
• Presentations and written recommendations, scaled to the work actually authorized and ready for any board, council, or public meeting

Governance, Policy & Internal Controls

Good governance is built, not declared. We put the policies, controls, and structures in place that make an organization accountable to the people it serves, ready for an audit, and easier to lead.

• Internal controls and purchasing policies, with the formal adoption needed to make them enforceable
• Finance calendars covering monthly, quarterly, annual, budget, audit, and legal deadlines
• Policy development and documentation, from reserves to procurement to records
• Meeting and workflow structures that clarify roles for boards, executives, and staff
• Auditor and professional relationships, established and maintained

Systems & Process Improvement

The measure of an engagement is what still works after it ends. We build stable systems and processes that last, and we help any organization, public or private, modernize what it runs on.

• ERP and financial system requirements, defining what you actually need before any software is chosen
• Workflow and process documentation that permanent staff can follow from day one
• Staff onboarding and transitions, including recurring responsibilities, reporting expectations, and a transition checklist
• Modernization roadmaps for organizations pursuing continuous improvement of existing systems and processes

Grants & Funding Strategy

Small organizations and communities rarely have a funding problem so much as a bandwidth problem. The money exists; the application hours do not. We find the programs, build the applications, and guide clients through the public processes that decide funding.

• Identifying funding sources across state, federal, and infrastructure financing programs
• Grant and low-interest loan applications for water, wastewater, and other infrastructure
• Grant navigation for nonprofits: positioning, applications, and reporting
• Capital project prioritization tied to funding capacity: what can the community or the budget actually carry?
• After the award: compliance, reporting, and drawdowns handled correctly

Advisory & Interim Support

Short-term, senior-level help without a permanent hire: interim administration, support during a staff transition, an independent second look at a consultant’s work, or a straight answer about whether you need a study at all.