Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas operate as a Unified Government (UG), putting one organization at the center of public services and financial decisions for a diverse and engaged community. Deputy Budget Director Michael Peterson and Senior Budget Analyst Adrian Alemifar lead budget operations for the UG, managing everything from departmental finances and grant-heavy community programs to the annual budget process.
Their mission is straightforward: communicate financial information clearly, consistently, and in a way that anyone can understand. That mission led them to Euna Solutions® OpenBook and, more recently, to Budget Book Studio.
Challenges
Like many local governments, Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas serves a community with a wide range of stakeholders, from residents with little financial background to vocal advocacy groups and elected officials, each with their own questions and expectations around how public money is managed. Building and maintaining trust across that spectrum is no small task.
A significant test came when Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas went revenue neutral, a Kansas state policy requiring local governments to formally vote, notify property tax payers, and hold a public hearing before collecting more property tax revenue than the prior year. For Wyandotte County and Kansas City, where property taxes make up roughly 60 to 70 percent of the county general fund, going revenue neutral meant cutting the mill rate more significantly than they had in over 20 years and eliminating capital funding from the county general fund entirely that year.
The challenge was helping the public understand what that decision actually required and the impact it had. A fund statement that holds flat from one year to the next tells you almost nothing about the hundreds of decisions that produced that number.
“There was an assumption we could go revenue neutral without making cost sacrifices,” Alemifar said. “We needed a solution to help us communicate what changed when we went revenue neutral.”
Their previous budgeting solution was well suited for internal stakeholders already fluent in budget terminology, but it did not offer a simple way to wrap narrative around financial data for a general audience. When Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas transitioned to a new ERP system, the limitations became a turning point.
Solution
The City and County selected Euna OpenBook, a financial transparency and publishing solution that helps public sector organizations share clear, accessible financial information with stakeholders and the community.
OpenBook gave the city and county something their previous solution could not: the ability to tell a story alongside the numbers. Using the Spotlight feature, the budget team built out plain-language articles for residents to explain what going revenue neutral meant, what was cut, and why. One spotlight covered the county side, another the city, and both were written with the same guiding principle Peterson describes for all of their public communications.
“We’re using OpenBook to tell stakeholders what we did, what changed, and why,” Peterson said.
More recently, Wyandotte County and Kansas City adopted Budget Book Studio to modernize their annual budget book, moving away from a years-long process of assembling Word files, Excel exports, and PDFs into a single document.
Results
The impact has been practical and meaningful. Elected officials have linked directly to OpenBook when communicating budget outcomes to constituents, giving the budget team a resource that works beyond the walls of a single meeting.
“We’ve seen others share links to our OpenBook in order to communicate budget information posted there,” Peterson said. “That’s a good sign.”
Having a published, accessible resource has also reduced the burden on staff. Rather than fielding the same questions across multiple meetings and channels, the budget team can point residents, commissioners, and communications staff to a single source of truth they can return to on their own time.
“OpenBook helps everybody be on the same page,” Peterson said. “It gives our communications team a tool to refer back to, and it gives elected officials something they can share without us having to be there.”
Both Peterson and Alemifar feel good about the direction things are heading. The work is ongoing, and rebuilding confidence with a community takes time, but the commitment to transparency is showing results.
“The ability to publish a narrative in OpenBook is helping our current situation,” Alemifar said. “I do think we’re moving forward in the right direction.”
For other governments considering a transparency tool, Peterson’s advice is simple: the numbers alone are not enough.
“If you’re not able to tell the story of why something is a certain way, or how you got there, the numbers don’t really mean very much. You need a tool to convey the narrative behind the numbers.”
You can visit Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas’ OpenBook here.