Senior Accountant

THE CITY

Located in the gateway to the Los Angeles metropolis, the City of Paramount offers secure quality of life to its residents and a business-friendly attitude that has created a growing retail and services sector, with a thriving Downtown. Paramount's government is a stable, innovative, and financially conservative organization, and the City has continually invested in its infrastructure and emphasized code enforcement and assistance programs to help residents and businesses upgrade and maintain their properties.

For these reasons, the City has a distinctive appearance that appeals to current and potential residents.

For its employees, Paramount offers a family-friendly organization that places emphasis on lifework balance and flexibility. City leadership highly values the input and impact of each employee. Rather than work from the top-down, Paramount chooses collaboration, fostering a professional, respectful, and fulfilling work environment.

The City of Paramount is operated by 6 departments:
Administrative Services;
Planning and Building;
Public Safety;
Public Works;
Community Services, and Finance. With an operating budget of $50.4M, City population of 52,000, and covering 4.8 square miles, the City of Paramount is dedicated to providing fiscally responsible services that maintain a vibrant community that is Safe, Healthy, and Attractive! We value respect and ethical behaviors, adaptability, service excellence, and accountability. The City promotes innovation through teamwork, and providing effective, inclusive, and transparent public information and engagement.

Under direction, to perform specialized and complex professional accounting and budgetary work to establish, analyze, verify, reconcile and maintain complex financial records for assigned departments, programs and/or citywide accounts; to review, analyze and develop designated budgets and accounts; to provide administrative support in the preparation of a variety of advanced and specialized financial, statistical and budgetary reports, statements and records; and to perform other related duties as assigned.

This is the second advanced-level class in the professional Accountant series. Incumbents perform complex and specialized accounting duties that require advanced knowledge and application of professional accounting principles and practices and may serve as lead worker for other professional and technical staff. This class is distinguished from the lower-level class of Accountant because the Accountant class is the journey-level class that performs professional accounting work of average difficulty.

An incumbent in this class receives direct supervision from the Assistant Finance Director or Finance Director. An incumbent in this class may serve as a lead worker for subordinate professional staff as a primary duty, and/or may exercise direct or indirect supervision over technical and clerical support staff as an ancillary duty.

• Perform advanced and specialized professional accounting and budgetary work to establish, analyze, verify, reconcile and maintain financial records for assigned departments, programs and/or citywide accounts; interpret and apply advanced professional accounting principles and practices to ensure that City financial recordkeeping activities comply with applicable laws, codes, rules, regulations, policies and procedures.
• Serve as a lead worker over subordinate professional, technical and clerical finance staff; schedule, assign, monitor, guide and train employees on the proper methods of work, the correct use of systems and tools, and the appropriate interpretation and application of City policies and procedures; ensure that work is performed and completed in accordance with departmental policies, procedures and requirements; provide input concerning employee evaluations as requested.
• Oversee and direct the maintenance, analysis, posting, balancing and reconciliation of all General Ledger and subsidiary accounts, as well as other account subsystems, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, inventory, fixed assets, revenues and utility billing systems; analyze and reconcile accounts for errors and make appropriate adjustments; ensure financial statements and cash amounts match organizational records as assigned; initiate account transfers and other transactions as needed.
• Perform a variety of specialized budget duties, including the development of budget schedules and reports, calculate and forecast payroll costs, prepare journal entries based on Council-approved budget adjustments; research and analyze budget transactions to resolve budget problems, and track budget adjustments.
• Control budgets for various funds and projects, determining if funds are available and expenditures are properly classified; provide advanced administrative support in budgetary review, analysis and development; monitor, evaluate and reconcile…