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Date: 3/23/2021
EASTHAMPTON – The city of Easthampton has received $35,000 in funding from the Baker Administration to help create an approach for real-time fiscal management software in all city departments.
The grants, which are a part of the Community Compact Best Practices program, will help the city focus on how to use technology to drive innovation and transformation at a local level. They will also assist in updating and streamlining financial processes to save time and taxpayer dollars.
The first grant is for $10,000 and will be used the potential consolidation of Easthampton’s financial management software. The city will promote transparency with residents by evaluating open checkbooks and/or open budget technologies that are easily consumed by the public. A subject matter expert will develop steps that will help put the city’s ledger and budget updates online. With these steps implemented, the budget data will reflect real-time figures.
A second grant for $25,000 will be used for a review and identification of business processes that are considered insufficient. After this analysis, a plan will be developed to better meet the needs of specific stakeholders.
“We’ve been watching these particular grants very carefully because it’s the way in which we update our budget presentation,” said Nicole LaChapelle, mayor of Easthampton. “We knew what our next steps were after we got that done.”
According to LaChapelle, the city won an award in 2020 for a distinguished budget presentation, which allowed them to be eligible for these grants.
“We knew that, once we got to that model, we really started to understand the inefficiencies and margin-for-error in how we were putting that budget together,” she said.
Once Easthampton was able to identify certain inefficiencies in their budget data, the city began thinking of different ways in which they could develop a comprehensive, cloud-based system of data collection.
With COVID-19 making it more difficult for Easthampton to have a more comprehensive financial data system, the grant will help provide the city with an “edge up” in the way in which they approach technological innovation and transformation, the mayor explained.
“I want to get a good feasibility study,” said LaChapelle, who added that she hopes to bring an expert in to assist with all of these studies. “I don’t want to spend all this money on a system that’s inappropriate.”
The added grants also plan to help taxpayers save money so they can shift their focus to local government interaction. According to LaChapelle, with the grants, Easthampton will be able to be more responsive on tax collection, tax rebate, as well as calculating prospective fees.
The city will also be less dependent on a high-level consultant because they have high-level variance programs that can provide necessary financial reports. If Easthampton can cut their spending to use one financial report program, then that saved money can instead go toward tax relief funds, capital stabilization, and other departments throughout the city, according to LaChapelle.
When it comes to assisting businesses, LaChapelle added that the grant will help the city acquire comparative data of what other businesses pay for personal property equipment.
“A part of a bid we already afforded was a new website platform that we’ll integrate into this financial software,” said LaChapelle. Through this, a business can communicate electronically with a department that connects with real-time data. It will be easier for residents to access business data online and place permit applications, if need be.
“We’ve had a lot of public input on a lot of our plans,” said LaChapelle, with regard to the compact grants. “This is something around equity and accessibility, and opening government. It’s truly a moral imperative of our budget to be as fully as accessible as we can.”