Covington has provided a new and innovative way to translate the city’s budget and finances.

According to a media release from the city, Covington partnered with ClearGov, a municipal transparency and benchmarking tool, to make this possible.

The new tool aims to bring clarity to community members about finances with “an infographic-based” look at the city’s budget and other demographics, the release stated.

“This new tool turns our 150+ page budget document into a much easier to understand and interactive format that allows users to view different city funds, as well as revenues and expenditures for the past 12 years,” said Covington Mayor Jeff Wagner in the release.

Rob Hendrickson, Covington’s finance director, said this new tool will present an “easy-to-understand” visual breakdown for the finances, giving tax paying community members better access to this information.

“The city currently posts the budget and financial statements to the website but the information is too detailed and without context. With ClearGov, website visitors can drill down into the information for more analysis and perspective,” Hendrickson said in an email.

He also said there has been occasional questions regarding the city’s budget and by pushing this information out to the community, users can research information online and answer their own questions.

The release said users can sort through the past several years of the city’s revenues and expenditures, including what taxes the city collects per capita income and other information regarding the city’s finances.

Once the city provided its data to ClearGov, the company summarized the data into categories, Hendrickson said.

ClearGov worked with the city’s finance staff to make gather information prior to the official launch date.

The total cost of adding this tool to the city’s website cost about $4,000, according to Hendrickson.

Since the tool just launched on June 28, Hendrickson said there has not been a lot of feedback about the online tool yet.

“As more demand is put on cities for financial information, these types of transparency centers will become more common,” he said. “With advances in technology and lower costs, cities (and other government agencies) will continue to leverage technology to keep their constituents informed.”

To take a look at Covington’s new Transparency Center, go to http://www.covingtonwa.gov/city_departments/finance.php.