WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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City administrators are moving toward buying software they say will make almost every city financial transaction available to the public. IT Director Rick Dietz told the Utilities Services Board last night that the software module would make transactional information available to the public as well as to the city’s many departments, the city council, and boards and commissions.
“Once it’s deployed, it’s totally automated,” says Dietz. “It takes all of the information that the city staff is already entering into the financial system, and on a nightly basis, it will synchronize that to a web portal.”
The module, called Citizen Transparency, is expected to cost approximately 18 thousand dollars. Board member Jeff Ehman questioned the benefit to utilities customers.
“What I see is the claims list. If other data is rolled up or made accessible that isn’t readily made available, I’d like to know that as a benefit and what instances are more accessible to our rate payers.”
City administrators are asking the Utilities Department to pay half of the cost. Board president Sam Frank and board members Jim Sims and Amanda Burnam pushed back on the request to split the cost 50-50. Burnam suggested spreading the cost over multiple city departments.
“I too am questioning the cost assigned to this, because even in this example that’s in here as an expenditures overview, there’s several different departments there within the city, one of which is public works. I don’t understand why we would be paying half when the city would be utilizing this for multiple…it almost should be prorated based on the number of entities.”
Dietz rationalized that the utilities department handled more transactions than most city departments. Assistant Finance Direcor Efrat Feferman agreed to discuss with City Controller Jeff Underwood options for distributing the cost of the software.
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