By: Mary Beth Almond | Birmingham-Bloomfield Eagle | Published March 17, 2025
BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP — Residents now have access to a new online portal that allows them to take a closer look into Bloomfield Township’s finances.
Township Finance Director Jason Theis said the Open Finance portal — found in the finance section on the townships’ website — allows residents to learn how their tax dollars are being managed and get a transparent look at the township’s finances.
“It’s been years in the making,” he said. “This specific (software) I found late last summer and it’s been a process getting that up and running, but it’s now live.”
Updated on a weekly basis, the Open Finance portal includes information on revenues, expenditures and vendor payments. It allows users to navigate through financial data, tables, charts and graphs, and includes data from prior fiscal years, for comparison.
The portal includes a financial summary in a few different categories, including revenue budget, expenditure budget, vendor spend and payroll spend.
The home page also features a search bar, a pie chart of major revenue sources and a couple links back to other finance pages.
“On the home page, you can search finance data — if there is something you’re looking for specifically, it will find all of the information with that term or amount in it,” Theis explained.
The interactive information, he noted, delivers a better understanding of revenues collected and how those revenues are utilized in providing citizens with public services.
“(Open Finance) is another expansion to what we’ve done over a number of years, building out our finance page,” Theis said. “We have all our audits on here, our budgets, the annual advisor reports, our actuarial variations, and we now have Open Finance. (We also have) OPEB (Other Post Employment Benefits), significant financial policies, our contracts and so forth.”
Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees member Chris Kolinski said he appreciates Theis “taking the time to find a way so we can be as transparent as we can be.”
“This is just adding to our transparency that we already have and provides our residents even more detail of what we are doing here, because there is nothing to hide,” Kolinski said.
Trustees Valerie Murray and Neal Barnett also voiced support for the new portal.
“It looks like a great tool. It gives you a lot more information,” Murray said.
“It’s just more information for the residents so they see how their money is being used,” added Barnett.
For more information, visit www.bloomfieldtwp.org or call the township at (248) 433-7700.