Year against year · 12 March 2026
Match the line before you measure the change
A percentage on a project that was split, merged, or newly named is not a change. It is a mismatch wearing a number.
“What changed since last year?” is a fair question at the opening of a budget reading. It is also the question most easily answered with a false number. Thai fiscal years run from 1 October to 30 September, so the pair is usually clear: this ordinance, and the one the council passed for the year now ending. The lines inside the pair are often not clear at all.
Clerks reorganize. A road project is split by soi. A subsidy moves from one plan to another because the Department of Local Administration’s form, or the mayor’s own plan structure, changed. A project is renamed after the contractor and the place were finally specified. A spreadsheet that sorts by name and subtracts will report a 100 percent fall and a 100 percent rise. The chamber hears that spending collapsed and exploded. The road is the same road.
Match before you measure. Pair a line this year with a line last year only when the official project name or code supports the pair. Where the executive says a rename happened, ask for both names on one note and treat them as a pair. Where nobody can defend a pair, mark the old line closed and the new line new. Do not compute a percentage from zero. “New this year” is a complete statement.
Merges and splits deserve their own drawing, not a footnote in six-point type. If two drains became one contract, show two names entering and one name leaving, with the baht of each. Members can then ask whether the contract is a saving or a loss of a place-name they had promised to fund. That question is the point of the comparison.
Revenue deserves the same courtesy and a separate page. Shared tax, a central subsidy, and a local fee can all rise while a single “income” bar looks calm or alarming for reasons that have nothing to do with the fee the council actually sets. A comparison folio that collapses revenue into one column has thrown away the only part of the income side many members feel they control.
Bring the two ordinances, not a summary already prepared for a slide. If the only file is a summary, the matching cannot be checked, and a figure that cannot be checked does not belong in the briefing.
Related commissions sit on the folios page. If a draft on your desk has this problem in it, write to the studio with the fiscal year.