Why municipalities have a love – hate relationship with PSAB: the direct and indirect impacts that PS 3150 guidelines have on municipal infrastructure planning

Abstract

This research project acknowledged that the introduction of PS 3150 guidelines were presented to Ontario municipalities as a new, unfunded mandated responsibility which was viewed by these municipalities to be an impossible challenge within the completion timeline. This research project identifies impacts that PS 3150 guidelines will have on infrastructure planning for municipalities, with a population of less than 5000, in Northern Ontario. The PS 3150 guidelines were created by the Public Sector Accounting Board (PSAB) of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) to outline the general process for public sector organizations to change from a modified accrual format to full accrual accounting complete with new financial statements. Municipalities have had to better account for both financial and non-financial assets when reporting on revenues and expenditures. The evaluation of the policy mandate outlined in PS 3150 guidelines has yet to be completed, however the impacts of the guidelines can be assessed based on the development and subsequent implementation of Tangible Capital Asset policies and asset management plans by municipal governments. The findings identified four key similarities among responses from the municipal representatives. The Impacts of PS 3150 legislation are primarily related to personnel, financial, planning, and technical issues. The key recommendation arising from the completion of this research is that municipalities need to move forward, pursue complete asset management plans, in order to demonstrate in a quantitative manner the costs associated with municipal infrastructure planning.