The City of Alpena has added a few links to its website in an effort to provide citizens with more financial and other information.

Some of the government transparency information was required by the State of Michigan’s Economic Vitality Incentive Program (EVIP).

That program allows cities to receive additional state revenue sharing if they provide citizens with certain financial information and other economic indicators.  The City of Alpena has been compliant with the requirements since last fall, but recently added even more information to its website that might be of interest to some.

A new “Government Transparency” tab at the top of the website’s front page leads viewers to rules of the EVIP, a performance dashboard, citizen’s guide, consolidation of services report and more.

“We’re trying to make it as easy as we can for people to find documents,” said city manager Thad Taylor.

He said “counters” have been added to some of the web pages to see how many people visit the new documents.  Taylor recently told the municipal council he is very interested to see how many citizens actually look at the available information.