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Open Budget Portal
In an effort to provide a more inclusive and transparent budget, we are pleased to present our Open Budget Portal. The City of Newport News partnered with OpenGov to provide a new, web-based financial transparency and business intelligence tool that dynamically presents the city's revenues and expenses, from multi-year trends to line item level details.
By leveraging the OpenGov platform, residents can use this website to have access and a better understanding of our budget.
For details regarding Newport News' many departments and programs, visit our most recent Operating Budget book.
- What revenue sources contribute to the City's General Fund?
- What type of expenses does the City's General Fund pay for?
- How does the City divide up the General Fund among departments?
- How much does the City spend on salaries and benefits (General Fund only)?
- How much does the City spend on salaries and benefits (citywide)?
- How much is the City receiving in general property tax revenue?
- What is the total amount spent on debt service?
- How much does our Police Department spend?
- What is the budget for Waterworks?
- What is the non-departmental budget in the general fund?
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- What is OpenGov?
- How do I select the data I want to see?
- Can I select more than one fund or department?
- How do I see the actual numbers within the graph?
- Can I see the data in a different graph?
- Why are there sometimes spikes in one year?
- Can I save the data I am looking at?
- How do I learn more about government accounting?
- I have a question. How do I contact the City of Newport News?
- What revenue sources contribute to the City's General Fund?
- What type of expenses does the City's General Fund pay for?
- How does the City divide up the General Fund among departments?
- How much does the City spend on salaries and benefits (General Fund only)?
- How much does the City spend on salaries and benefits (citywide)?
- How much is the City receiving in general property tax revenue?
- What is the total amount spent on debt service?
- How much does our Police Department spend?
- What is the budget for Waterworks?
- What is the Nondepartmental budget in the General Fund?
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Tips on Using the Open Budget Portal
- The Open Budget Portal allows you to explore budget and historical finances in a simple graphical user interface. The main view includes a chart or graph, a legend and various controls to view expenses or revenues by various funds, departments, or types.
- You will notice the title of the chart or graph you are viewing on top along with the account type selector. You can use the filter to see the data that is of most interest to you.
- There are five different types of visual representations of the data - an area graph, an area graph by percentage, a line graph a pie chart and a bar chart. You can change your view by type at any point by simply selecting the different type of graph representation. The data will automatically convert. These functions are on the top right, and the icons represent the graph type.
- Below any chart or graph, you can view a table detailing the financial information in the visualization above.
- Use the Help drop-down in the top right corner to:
- View a short How-To Guide with tips on navigating the platform.
- Recall the Welcome Screen.
- View a short Budget 101 primer with basic information on multi-fund budgeting (how the accounts relate to each other).
- Contact the City with comments/questions about the site.
- Use the Sharedrop-down in the top right corner to:
- Share your customized graph or chart through social media.
- Send a link to your customized graph or chart through email.
- Use the Downloaddrop-down in the top right corner to:
- Download an image of the graph or table as a .png file.
- Download a spreadsheet as a .csv file.
- To focus on specific data - like a fund, department, expense type, or any combination - look to the left and use the menu on the side panel. These selectors allow you to specify exactly what breakdown you want the graph or table to represent. When you select "Filtered By" the data filter pops up and allows you to turn on or turn off selected filters for that category - funds, departments, expense type.
- Keep in mind that some funds do not have every type of revenue or expense. For example, the Public Utilities Fund does not collect any general property tax revenue. If it is not included, it will be grayed out.
Newport News-specific Tips
- The Fiscal Year data is currently available for FY 2012 - FY 2015.
- The City’s main fund is the General Fund. The General Fund accounts for most of the major services associated with local government such as public safety, parks and recreation, and public works. The primary sources of revenue are real estate taxes, personal property taxes, local consumption taxes, and revenue from the Commonwealth.
- The City has several "Special Revenue" funds which are supported by specific, dedicated revenues such as solid waste user fees or pension contributions.
- A "Governmental Fund" is where most of the work happens. Here you will find the General Fund, the Special Revenue Funds, and the Debt Service Fund.
- In the "Proprietary Fund" category, there is the Public Utilities Fund (Waterworks) and several Internal Service Funds. An Internal Service Fund is a fund that the City uses internally to pay for specific items such as general liability and worker's compensation insurance.
- The data is solely for the City of Newport News and does not include financial data from the school district.
- Some expenditures or revenues do not track from year to year. For example, there may be an expenditure for a specific item or project in Fiscal Year 2012 that the City no longer uses. These expenditure categories will be visible for the years in which they were encountered. After that, they will zero out.
- "Budget" data reflects the City Council adopted budget for each fiscal year.
- "Actual" data reflect expenses made or revenues collected in that fiscal year only (from July 1st to June 30th). It includes encumbrances, or funds that are committed by a contract but have not yet been spent. It does not include expenses in that year for contracts made in the prior year.
- In the "Current Year" report, monthly data for the current year (in this case Fiscal Year 2015) is current as of the last day of the month following the month in question. For example, data for the month of January 2015 is taken from the City’s financial system the last day of February 2015.