Tool allows public to make sense of tax dollars

Residents who want to track their tax dollars will soon have a new tool: the Budget Live program, which will allow them to track each major budget category on the town’s website, longboatkey.org.

Despite the program’s name, the program technically won’t be “live,” according to Town Manager David Bullock, but expenditures will be updated every few days. The information is currently available internally but will be available to the public within a week or two.

Users can look at the town’s adopted budget to track spending in categories such as wages, travel, professional services and building expenses. They can also select any of the town’s major departments and get a breakdown of personnel costs, grants, capital and detailed project information. Users can track 39 categories of expenditures. The program includes a notes field that will provide explanation for certain expenditures and also provides graphs showing the amount budgeted for the fiscal year and year-to-date spending for many categories. Budget data from the past three years will be available.

“There will be a lot of pretty significant data for those who are interested in tracking tax dollars,” Bullock said.

Bullock, who spent 17 years with Sarasota County, including 14 as deputy county administrator before becoming town manager in November, said that a similar program is available in the county.

“We always had the budget posted as part of a transparency thing,” he said.

Bullock said that the information drew interest from both residents and vendors who wanted to learn how much had been budgeted for projects.

Bullock said that the town’s Finance Department and Multiple Information Departments worked together to modify tools the town already had to make the information available.

The town will hold public information sessions later this month to help familiarize residents with the tool.