EASTHAMPTON — The city been awarded $35,000 in Community Compact grants to help businesses improve inefficient processes and make financial data more streamlined and accessible to the public.
The funding is broken into a $10,000 award to review and potentially consolidate the city’s financial management software, and $25,000 to review, identify and redevelop inefficient business processes.
The grant focused on improving business processes will bring in a consultant to work with the city departments toward “working as efficiently as possible to minimize their stress, but also to make sure we’re giving premium services to our employees and premium services to Easthampton.”
The city had not taken a close look at the processing of information day to day in a while, Mayor Nicole LaChapelle said, and “in the face of COVID, we really found out where those weaknesses were and where there were duplicate processes that really worked against each other.”
Without the grant, the city would need to tackle these issues on a piecemeal basis, LaChapelle said, and the streamlined process should ultimately save taxpayers money.
“We can really look at the multirelational component of municipal government,” LaChapelle said, “then make a solid plan going forward prioritizing those functions that need updating and that residents really want to see.”
The second piece of funding will allow the city to conduct a research and feasibility study for open checkbook and budgeting software, which would make financial data more accessible to residents and easier for departments to work with.
While this data is already in the public and available on the city’s website, the new software would allow residents to access this data in a more up-to-date, streamlined manner. The currently available data is kept in static documents.
The city would likely start out with monthly updates, LaChapelle said, and work towards a system that updates in real time.
The Community Compact Best Practices program was set up to fund projects that save taxpayers money, facilitate easier interactions with local government and make city processes more effective overall.
Jacquelyn Voghel can be reached at jvoghel@gazettenet.com.