Town of Walpole Launches Fiscal Transparency Center
Town of Walpole Launches Fiscal Transparency Center
In Partnership with ClearGov, Walpole Brings Clarity to Local Government Finances
WALPOLE, MA (July 11, 2018) - The Town of Walpole announced today that it has partnered with ClearGov, a leading municipal transparency and benchmarking platform, to launch an infographic-based fiscal transparency center.
This new tool provides taxpayers an easy-to-understand, visual breakdown of Walpole’s finances, as well as insights into the Town’s demographics. The site also informs visitors as to how each budget item compares to neighboring communities.
The Town is part of a growing movement of Massachusetts municipalities that are taking transparency to a new level on the ClearGov platform, which also showcases basic profiles of every municipality in the state. Walpole has added detailed revenue and expenditure breakdowns of its General Fund data. Walpole has also included budgeted expenditures.
"I am pleased to unveil this partnership with ClearGov as a component of Walpole's continuing commitment to greater transparency and accessibility at Town Hall," said Town Administrator James Johnson. "This interactive website provides the public with an easy-to-use dashboard to examine Walpole's household demographics, analyze the composition of the Town's revenue streams and spending categories, and compare these metrics to those from previous years and comparable communities. I am proud of the work that our Finance and Information Technology teams have done to make this standardized tool available for data-driven discussions in our budget and policy-making processes. I encourage all Walpole residents to visit www.cleargov.com to review Walpole’s profile and to contact my office any time for questions or more information."
“Walpole is a real champion of transparency” said Chris Bullock, CEO of ClearGov. “The town’s administration has not only pushed the envelope on the amount of information shared, but they’ve also gone to great lengths to make sure the information is understandable.”
ClearGov sources publicly available financial data on municipalities to create easy-to-understand transparency websites for all municipalities across the United States, which are made available to the public for free. Municipalities can choose to upgrade and enhance their publicly available transparency site with more robust information and provide context through commentary on the figures.
Visit Walpole’s Website: https://www.walpole-ma.gov/
Visit Walpole’s ClearGov site: https://www.cleargov.com/massachusetts/norfolk/town/walpole/2018
About Walpole, MA
Walpole is a suburban community in Norfolk County located about 19 miles southwest of Boston and 28 miles north of Providence. With approximately 25,000 residents and 9,000 households, the town’s population has been growing steadily at a rate of 0.52% since 2010. Walpole has an FY2019 operating budget of $89.5 million, which supports a range of municipal services that includes educating the town’s 4,540 school students, providing police and fire protection, building and maintaining town roads and facilities, providing clean drinking water, promoting economic development, and delivering essential quality of life services to all Walpole residents. Walpole has a five-member Board of Selectmen and Representative Town Meeting form of government.
About ClearGov
ClearGov helps local governments communicate and operate more effectively and efficiently through a unique fiscal clarity and insights platform. Local governments leverage ClearGov to more clearly communicate their financial performance in an effort to build citizen trust and participation through transparency. ClearGov also provides valuable municipal benchmarking intelligence to help government leaders quickly compare their finances against similar communities to make more informed and data-driven policy and budgetary decisions.
Press Contacts:
James Johnson
Town of Walpole
508-660-7300
Jena Skivington
ClearGov
(855) 553-2715 x 4