(Photo by Shelley Hanson) Skylar Wotring, director of transparency and oversight for the West Virginia State Auditor’s Office, stands in the city building hallway after showing Moundsville City Council members the city’s new West Virginia Checkbook webpage, https://moundsvillewv.opengov.com/transparency.

MOUNDSVILLE – Moundsville residents who want to see their city’s budget, including revenues and expenditures, or just check on how a particular department is fairing, can now do just that thanks to a new webpage designed by the West Virginia Auditor’s Office.

Skylar Wotring, director of transparency and oversight for the West Virginia State Auditor’s Office, showed members of City Council the new site during their regular meeting on Tuesday. The site’s address is https://moundsvillewv.opengov.com/transparency.

Many cities and counties across the state are participating in the new program called the West Virginia Open Checkbook Transparency Initiative. Moundsville’s site and others across the state can also be found at https://www.wvcheckbook.gov/.

Before giving council a tour of the site, Wotring played a video message from West Virginia Auditor John McCuskey.

“I’m so thankful the city of Moundsville has decided to join the West Virginia Checkbook,” McCuskey said, adding that he wanted to thank Mayor Sara Wood-Shaw and City Manager Rick Healy for helping make the page a reality.

“What the city of Moundsville can now do is that they can communicate with their constituents in a way that is really first class,” he said. “It’s going to enable their government and citizens to work together to make sure Moundsville turns into the city that we all know that it should be.”

McCuskey added the city is “uniquely positioned in the Northern Panhandle” for growth.

“We’re really excited about making sure that Moundsville and all our local governments have everything they need to be successful,” McCuskey said. “We’re really looking forward to seeing what Moundsville does with our checkbook site.”

The program is not mandatory and there is no cost to the city. Wotring said the auditor’s office would continue to provide help and support, but it would never tell the city what to put on the page. The city employees will be tasked with adding information. There will also be a “stories” section where the city can provide information about how specific funds or grants are being used along with photos as well.

Wotring said members of council, if they wish, can have their “dashboards” within the page so they can decide information they want to save and look at.

“The data that is in there now is only up to the end of the fiscal year,” he said, noting it will be up to the city to decide how often it wants to put up new information.