Merced offers new transparency tool on city’s money matters

The Merced City Council got its first look last week at a new transparency tool available to anyone with Internet access.

Chief Financial Officer Brad Grant gave the council a tour during Monday’s regular meeting of the online tool called OpenGov. The tool allows anyone who’s interested to look at the city’s bank account as it changes in real time.

OpenGov’s website describes the tool as a cloud-based financial analysis platform. The tech company works with more than 250 state and local governments in 36 states, according to its website.

“This really gives one the ability to very easily look at the numbers for the past five years,” Grant said.

The website uses pie charts and bar, line and other graphs as visual aids. Merced’s OpenGov page shows a handful of saved searches for frequently asked questions, such as the amount spent on public safety or on city parks.

The website also allows users to filter information to find other more specific numbers. It drills down further than the top layer of the budget. For example, users looking into the city’s general fund can look beyond the total number and into the services, fines and taxes that pay into the fund.

The City Council approved the cost of the transparency tool last year at $9,500 annually for five years.

Mayor Stan Thurston said he believes the service will help to mitigate rumors of misuse of city dollars. He also said it’s “timely” to unveil the new tool now because the council will be delving further into the coming fiscal year’s budget.

The council is often asked for new programs or expanded services, so the tool can help those people to do some research before asking. “We always want people to come armed with information as much as possible,” he said.

Councilman Mike Murphy said he’s been wanting for some time a transparency tool that has an easy-to use format that can help the council and city residents better understand Merced’s budget.

While the service provides transparency, Murphy hopes it will lead to new ideas from anyone with the time to comb over the books, he said. “We have potentially 81,000 more people to help us look under the cushions for spare change,” he said, referring to the city’s population.

Merced’s numbers are expected to be available this week at https://mercedca.opengov.com. The city’s website also has a link to that OpenGov page, as well as a tutorial on using it.

For more on the company, go to www.opengov.com.

This story was originally published April 26, 2015 at 5:39 PM with the headline "Merced offers new transparency tool on city’s money matters."