257 
PARK AND CEMETERY . 
PARK ORGANIZATION AND ACCOUNTING PLAN 
{Concluded) 
Report by Olmsted Brothers, Lindscape Architects, Brookline, 
Mass., to the Metropolitan Park Commission, Providence, R. 1. 
II, ACCOUNTING. 
In order to carry on the business of 
the Commission in a businesslike way, 
to husband its resources, and to have a 
gauge upon the efficiency of work done 
for it, it is important to keep accounts 
of cost in considerable detail. Such 
detailed records of cost are reliable and 
instructive mainly in proportion as their 
subdivisions are made to show^ those 
groupings of cost over which individ- 
ual departments and agents of the Com- 
mission can exercise an effective and 
responsible discretion, so that extrava- 
gance or economy can be brought home 
to individuals : and in proportion as 
these individual agents can be made to 
feel a sense of responsibility both for 
the proper charging of the items to the 
several accounts and for the size of the 
several totals. It is in this tlwt lies 
mainly the value of the budget system 
by which the agents of a Commission 
have a share, each within his own 
sphere, in the making up of the esti- 
mates, and in the assignment of items 
to tlie several accounts (or at least have 
an effective opportunity to protest errors 
in charging) and are then held accoun- 
table for discrepancies between esti- 
mates and actual costs. Holding to ac- 
countability, however, does not mean 
the determination of rigid and detailed 
appropriations prohibiting all flexibility, 
because such a system inevitably leads 
to fallacious statements of cost, doubt- 
ful or obscure items being charged to 
accounts where there is the most mon- 
ey available instead of to those where 
they properly belong. 
The systems of accounts which we 
propose below is a flexible one, permit- 
ting the development of such subdivis- 
ions as experience may show to be de- 
sirable. It is not intended primarily as 
a means to facilitate tha audit or con- 
trol of the expenditures of the execu- 
tive force from the outside, but as a 
means for enabling the executive force 
to gauge its own work intelligent!}^ and 
exactly. 
All expenditures for the Commission 
must be made by the State treasurer 
upon the presentation of one or the 
other of two kinds of original records; 
approved bills, including certificates of 
the performance of contracts, and ap- 
proved pay rolls. 
The form of time-book and pay-roll 
blank submitted herewith are based 
partly upon a form used by Mr. G. A. 
Parker in the Hartford parks and partly 
upon a form developed by experience 
in our own office, where each employe, 
as is often the case in park work, fre- 
quently does work chargeable to sev- 
eral different accounts in the course of 
a single w'eek or even a single day. 
Each foreman or chief of party or 
other agent immediately responsible 
for the doing of certain work is 
given one of these time-books. Upon 
doing any work he enters in a column 
at the top of the right-hand page (1) 
the abbreviation for the territorial di- 
vision of the park system in which or 
for which the work is done (marking it 
gen. if of a general character relating 
to the system as a whole; (2) the ab- 
breviation for the account to which the 
work is chargeable (administration, de- 
sign, construction, maintenance, etc., as 
explained later on) ; and (3) a brief de- 
tailed indication of what the work is. 
On the daily slip in the column under 
this heading he enters opposite the name 
of each man the time he works on that 
particular job. And so with any other 
jobs done on the same day by himself 
and his men. At the end of each day he 
totals up and enters under the proper day 
of the week at the left, opposite each 
man's name, the total time worked by 
him that day, and, lifting up the daily 
slips, he enters under the column heading 
of each job and on the line of the proper 
day of the week the total time worked 
that day on each job by all his men. He 
then tears off the daily time slip and sends 
it in to the bookkeeeper. The daily slip 
thus detached is meaningless until the 
weekly sheet with the column headings 
and men's names is turned in, but it is 
important to insist on having it turned 
in daily so as to insure the entering of 
the record on the weekly slip on the very 
day when the work is done. The daily 
slips are of course compared by the 
bookkeeper with the weekly sheet when 
the latter is turned in so as to check er- 
rors of addition and transcription. 
Keeping the job headings and the- men’s 
names on the weekly sheet and having 
nothing but a few figures on the daily 
slips avoids the daily duplication of an 
appreciable amount of clerical work 
which is annoying to the men. The re- 
duction of the lime totals to dollars and 
cents is done by the bookkeeper by ref- 
erence to the daily slips which show the 
amount of time of each man at whatever 
rate of pay going to make up the day’s 
total time on each job. 
The form for the distribution of costs 
to be attached to bills can be much sim- 
pler because bills are much less fre- 
quently distributable among a number of 
different accounts. 
We recommend the keeping of the 
accounts on 10 by 12 cards rather than 
in books, because the number of subdi- 
visions under which the accounts will 
be kept is liable to fluctuate considerably 
and the system should be easily altered 
to adapt it to the results of local ex- 
perience. Again, it is a convenience of 
the card system that the accounts can 
be grouped together, temporarily, for 
stud)q w’ithout the necessity for trans- 
cription, either by territorial divisions or 
otherwise. In a voucher book would be 
entered all payrolls, bills and other 
vouchers approved and sent to the state 
treasurer for payment, and for any pe- 
riod the totals of this book and the 
cost accounts would have to balance. 
We submit herewith a partial series of 
suggestive headings and blank forms for 
the several accounts. These we were 
submitting at the same time to Mr. G. 
A. Parker, superintendent of parks at 
Hartford, for criticism and suggestion, 
and when we hear from him we shall 
report further in the matter. 
The one practical result of all the 
operations and expenditures of a park 
commission is the existence of certain 
parcels of park land, acquired, improved, 
maintained, and made available for pub- 
lic use and enjoyment ; and the main 
purpose of the accounts must be to 
show the cost of these four classes of 
operations for each territorial division 
of the park system, with such further 
subdivision as may be desired. The fol- 
lowing primary accounts, therefore, 
should be kept for each territorial di- 
vision of the park system. 
Land Account: including all expenses 
involved in acquiring land and ease- 
ment's within each division of the park 
system. 
Construction Account: including all ex- 
penses involved in the physical im- 
provement of each division of the 
park system ; provided the improve- 
ments are such as to alter the class 
of services rendered to the people by 
the land, or materially to increase the 
service so rendered. 
Maintenance Account: including all ex- 
penses involved in preventing perman- 
ent deterioration of each division of 
the park system and in maintaining it 
in a condition fit to serve the purpose 
for which it is intended. This account 
