Fluvanna gets A in ‘budget finding’

WILLIAMSBURG — The budget of Fluvanna County has brought out many emotions the past year, but Fluvanna’s budget gets an A according to a survey from the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

The grade isn’t in association to the actual numbers or distribution of within the budget, it is ease of finding essential information.

The VCOG believes that self-government depends on a well informed citenzery. The coalition looked at ease of finding the budget on an localities website and essential information within the budget as the building block of the government.

View the entire Virginia Coalition of Open Government survey

In the press release, the coalition notes it is only looking at one document but it is one of the most essential documents the localities use each year.

“It’s simple, really: Without the budget there’s nothing else,” the release on the VCOG’s website reads.

Fluvanna was in with 17 localities to receive either an A or A-. One locality, City of Fairfax received an A+. Fluvanna received an A with 47 out of a possible 50 points.

The explanation for an A is how many clicks it takes to get to the budget from the locality’s main website, words used as links, if the budget document was searchable for keywords and if the budget was available on the first page of search box results.

Fluvanna County makes finding the budget easy. The word ‘Budget’ is on the landing page and one click eight budgets or budget subsections available. Also, each budget is an easy to search PDF.

Fluco Blog has searched multiple years of budgets easily in other news reports.

The county is launching a new website this month. The current website uses frames which can be very frustrating trying to share one select page. A frame remains active and lets other iFrames change within it. It is hard to share an iFrame without removing the previous frame.

The new website will include Google calendars and email alerts.

The Virginia Coalition for Open Government engages citizens to monitor the actions of their state and local governments as part of the democratic process. The Coalition is a non-profit, non-partisan membership organization that presses for access to public records, meetings and judicial proceedings.