There's still hope

There is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate, SB38, that would require cities to post financial information to their website. If you've read my previous posts, you'll know that I'm a big proponent of Woods Cross posting the annual budget on the website. This would be a huge benefit for the citizens and would require very little on the part of Woods Cross City. This seems like a no-brainer to me. The bill is titled "Transparency in Government Finance" and it would seem to me that cities that don't post their budget information on their website, don't want that transparency.

Contact your State Senator and urge them to vote for Senate Bill 38.

Online Crime Information

The Utah Attorney General's Office issued a press release yesterday about crime information being made available online. (see press release here) The data is available by accessing CrimeReports.com. According to the press release, Davis County and Woods Cross are the only South Davis County law enforcement agencies participating.

The interface is very easy to use and displays the information very cleanly.


Currently, Woods Cross doesn't appear to have any crime data submitted to the database. Hopefully this will be coming soon. Each of those orange squares represents where a registered sex offender lives.

I believe having this information easily accessible for residents is a great step forward. I'm a big proponent of having public information posted online. Now if we could just get our city to post the annual budget online.

Woods Cross could learn a lot from West Valley City

I was recently looking at West Valley City's re-designed web site. I was quite impressed by it. You may look at the first page and think "That's not much better than what Woods Cross has." I thought the same thing when just looking at the front page, but, then I dug deeper. One place where their web site leaves Woods Cross City's in the dust is in their City Council Agendas and Minutes page. If you click on one of the dates at that page, it has a "Supporting Documents" area. This is great stuff! It gives the public more information than just an agenda item.

Another thing that is great about West Valley's web site that I've previously mentioned wanting to see Woods Cross do, is West Valley posts their budget online for the residents to see. Why doesn't Woods Cross post the budget for all to see? It makes you wonder if there is something they are wanting to hide. E-mail your mayor and city council members and let them know you want to see the budget posted on the web site.

These are two great things that West Valley has done with their web site. Woods Cross could serve our citizens much better by doing similar things with our web site.