Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Open Data Transparency topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Prescott staff demonstrate OpenGov platform to council, highlight public-safety tax tracking
Summary
City finance staff gave Prescott City Council a live demonstration of the new OpenGov financial-transparency and procurement platform at the June 10, 2025 study session, showing how the system displays budget, capital projects and public-safety tax revenues and offering follow-up training for council and the public.
At the Prescott City Council study session on June 10, 2025, city finance staff demonstrated the city’s new OpenGov transparency and procurement software, showing how residents and council can view budgets, capital plans and the recently adopted public-safety tax in near real time.
The demonstration, led by Catherine Bolen, senior accountant, walked council through preset views and interactive drill-downs in the online budget book, the capital plan and a dedicated public-safety tax “story” that pulls live data from the city’s accounting system. “The purpose of this ... is more to demonstrate how to navigate the system and how to get the information that you need,” Bolen said during the presentation.
Why it matters: the OpenGov platform is the city’s central tool for publishing budget details, multi-year capital plans and spending tied to the public-safety tax, which went into effect April 1. Bolen showed year-to-date public-safety-tax revenue “as of last night,” listing $1,700,000 in tax receipts, about $182,000 in operating expenses and $31,000 in capital expenditures for that fund. The platform also displays multi-year project lists, funding sources and line-item detail to the level of account numbers.
The demonstration emphasized three functions council members asked about: historical data retention, printable views for presentations and a dashboard in development to aggregate frequently used reports for council. “We have data in the system going back to 2021, and we will just maintain that,” Bolen said when asked whether prior years’ records will remain accessible.
Council members raised practical questions. Councilman Moore asked whether fiscal-year comparisons and historical years would remain available; Bolen confirmed the data can be preserved and displayed as actuals and year-to-date figures. The presentation also showed how to filter reports by fund, department, revenue type and capital project and how to export or print charts and tables for meetings.
City staff said the platform is integrated with the city’s accounting system and is updated nightly. Bolen offered one-on-one training for council members and noted a help button residents can use to email finance for assistance. Mark (staff member), who introduced the item, encouraged council members to “start playing around with this” so they can better assist residents who ask about the public-safety tax and other budget items.
The session included a brief demonstration of the capital plan module (a five-year plan) and examples of project pages that list descriptions, justifications, anticipated expenditures by type and funding sources. Bolen noted a sample water project showing WIFA as a funding source and a streets preservation project funded from the streets fund.
Staff indicated further refinements are planned, including a council dashboard and printable PDFs for story pages. No formal council action was taken at the study session; the demonstration was informational and staff invited follow-up training and questions.
