Expenditures The Per Capita Expenditures by Function chart indicates that Ponderosa spends more than most of the reference cities. The table indicates that the highest expenditure for the city of Ponderosa stands as the Public Safety, particularly for police and fire services (see Figure 4). Since Ponderosa exists as a tourist destination, the high cost of utilizing police and fire to safeguard the public relates to that tourism industry—vacation homes, attractions, and residents. At the beginning of the budget, the city of Ponderosa was in a surplus. In the finalized budget, the built-in deficit exists as a signal of a negative financial condition, if Ponderosa’s beginning budget does not include sufficient fund balances to counteract
