City Launches Interactive Financial Transparency Tool

The City of San Marcos is launching a new digital platform that provides residents, elected officials, and staff unprecedented access to the city’s finances and performance information.

The platform, powered by OpenGov, transforms complex financial data into an interactive, digital format that enables better analysis and understanding of the city’s finances. The platform may be accessed at the City’s financial transparency page: www.sanmarcostx.gov/transparency.

OpenGov is gaining recognition statewide as a valuable tool for financial transparency, with the City of McKinney winning a Texas Municipal League award for transparency after implementing the OpenGov platform.

“Using this new platform makes the City’s budget and finances more accessible and easier to understand at a glance,” said Finance Director Heather Hurlbert. “This platform will also allow us to provide more detailed and specialized City performance reports to our citizens.”

The OpenGov platform displays five years of the government budget, spending and revenue detail in a user-friendly portal. Users can view historical revenue and expenditure trends over time and explore multiple views of financial data, including by fund, department, expense, or revenue type.

The City will be adding additional reporting options in the future including the City’s Checkbook report. Visitors will be able to quickly view and search thousands of expenditure transactions dating back several years. The data can be instantly searched and filtered according to specific detail such as vendor name, date description and even dollar amount.

The City has created customized reports based on frequent citizen requested financial information for easy access to this information. The Finance Department welcomes citizen feedback on the new platform and will consider adding additional customized reports based on this feedback. Please email finance_info@sanmarcostx.gov with any feedback on or questions about the platform.