At the City of Montgomery’s May 22, 2025 workshop, staff presented the ClearGov budgeting platform as the primary tool for the FY2026 budget process and demonstrated how the city will use the software to collect department requests, track changes, attach supporting documents, and publish a public-facing digital budget.

Mary Ann Clark, who introduced the platform to the council, said the ClearGov implementation was adopted in the current fiscal year to enable a more interactive and auditable budget process. Clark explained that departments enter baseline figures, create 'in progress' budget rounds, add narrative and attachments for justification, and that finance and department heads can exchange questions and responses inside the system instead of relying on separate meetings or email chains.

Clark demonstrated key features: role-based access (staff see only the line items they control), the ability to attach vendor quotes or other supporting documents to specific line items, and a public notes field that can be made visible on the citizen-facing budget pages to explain line-item changes. She said the system currently contains adopted 2022 and 2023 historicals at a summary level and that the city can increase the frequency of year‑to‑date actual uploads to give council more live figures during the fiscal year.

On costs and modules, Clark said the package currently in use (digital budget book, personnel budgeting, and operational modules) has an annual cost around $18,000 and that the capital-improvement project module exists but was not yet implemented; staff said the CIP module is a future option because capital projects are multi‑year and require a larger setup effort.

Council members asked about access, historical data detail, the public-facing presentation, and whether ClearGov could be used for CIP management; Clark said those items are possible and that staff will keep the council updated on rollout. Council members were told they should expect the next budget workshop on June 9, when the first departmental round of budget submissions will be available for review.

Ending: Staff characterized the platform as a transparency and efficiency improvement that will preserve historical budget records and support iterative budget rounds; no budget decisions were made at the workshop.