When a company issues a dividend, do they reduce their stock price by the same amount?

I work for a \~5000 person employee owned company, and they do annual “return of capital” where they pay out a dollar or so per share, but also reduce the share price by that same amount. Then yearly the board gets together and decides how much the new share price is going to be for the next year. I asked the generic email why they do it this way and had the CFO call me in reply, saying “would you rather have a $20 asset and $10 debt or a $10 asset and no debt” and I said I wouldn’t care, he said he disagrees and that this is how public companies do it as well. So is that how public companies do dividends/returns of capital?