Problem with online program postpones city budget hearing

The city of Santa Fe on Wednesday postponed the second day of budget hearings scheduled for Thursday amid problems with a new and highly touted online tool the city used to develop the spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

“We had a problem with the program and want to make sure that everything is in order before we present it,” City Manager Brian Snyder announced during Wednesday’s City Council meeting.

“We hope to reinitiate those budget hearings on Friday,” he said, adding the city would make the governing body and public aware of when the hearings will resume.

For the first time this year, the city used an online tool known as OpenGov Budget Builder to create the proposed budget.

“We’re in the first week of this new system that we think over the long term is going to make the budgeting process and the budget more accessible and more transparent to staff, to councilors, to the media and to the public at large. That’s our final goal,” city spokesman Matt Ross said.

“There’s always a little bit of a struggle when you’re rolling out something brand new and something really big and something that is systemwide like this.”

Ross said the city decided to “push the pause button” to conduct budget hearings right rather than quickly.

“We were seeing some of the totals in some of the spreadsheets that are coming through and filtering through the OpenGov system look like they might be a little bit off in one direction or the other in different scenarios and across different departments,” he said.

“So, we’re just going to pause and go back and verify the numbers to make sure that everything that is getting put out there is accurate and correct.”