This Tool Makes Municipal Finance… Fun?
For many city leaders, municipal finance isn’t just dry—it’s dizzying. Annual financial reports often span more than 100 pages, and key trends get buried in spreadsheets few have the time or expertise to decipher. But what if all that complexity could be distilled into something not just readable, but revealing—and maybe even a little bit fun?
Enter the Strong Towns Finance Decoder, a free tool that visualizes the fiscal health of local governments through six simple graphs. At a glance, users can spot patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed for years. And for city officials, advocates, and everyday residents alike, the Decoder is becoming a launchpad for deeper conversations about how and where public money is spent.
“This is very enlightening!” wrote a Tennessee city official who tested the Decoder on their town’s financial documents. “Brings clarity to what has been strictly based on the opinion of so many over the years, because who has the time or the ability to make heads or tails of our 100-page ACFR...”
That’s exactly the point. The Finance Decoder doesn’t claim to replace local knowledge or audit-level detail—but it does break down critical trends in a way that makes them legible. The graphs are not endpoints–they’re entry points. They’re the start of a conversation, not the final word. And in city after city, that conversation is long overdue.
From Data to Dialogue
Take Bellevue, Wisconsin, a growing suburb of Green Bay. There, local leaders discovered how state-level tax caps and sprawling development patterns combine to strain municipal budgets.
“The Finance Decoder results show the true results of our primarily low-density residential development pattern,” one user explained. “We can't control levy limits at the local level, but we can respond by changing the types of infrastructure we build and the development patterns we allow and pursue.”
By surfacing these systemic pressures in an accessible way, the Decoder gave Bellevue a framework for action. It helped decision-makers connect abstract trends to real-world choices about zoning, infrastructure, and long-term maintenance.
In Layton, Utah, the results raised a different kind of question.
“I’m grateful that Strong Towns released their Finance Decoder,” one resident wrote on LinkedIn. “I only had data from 2016 onward, but my city seems to be doing well despite looking like most suburban cities.”
On paper, Layton’s finances looked unusually strong—prompting some to wonder why. Was this a sign of true long-term stability? Or was the city in an early phase of the Growth Ponzi Scheme, a pattern Strong Towns has documented where communities appear fiscally healthy during boom years but collapse under the weight of infrastructure liabilities later?
“You have a great asset-to-liability ratio,” replied Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn. “But you’re taking in a lot of outside money, and I wonder why. Is it for growth? Is it just general aid?”
The Decoder didn’t provide a verdict. But it did help frame better questions: How much of Layton’s financial picture relies on external funding? And what happens when that funding disappears?
A Deeper Dive in Columbus
In Columbus, Ohio, residents took things a step further. After using the Decoder to examine the city’s financial trends, Strong Towns Columbus—a local conversation group—organized a conversation with a municipal finance expert to help contextualize what they were seeing.
That conversation opened up a world of nuance. For example, Columbus runs its own utilities—a rare setup that affects how the city’s liabilities and assets are reported. At first glance, some graphs looked troubling. But once the group accounted for the city's unique structure, the picture changed. Liabilities tied to revenue-generating utilities made more sense in context, especially when paired with healthy debt repayment capacity.
Other insights raised new concerns. The "Average Remaining Life of Assets" graph, for instance, showed a steady decline. That prompted the group to dig deeper, learning that recent dips in asset value might be tied to labor and contractor shortages amid a wave of major construction projects—such as the new Intel chip plant, tech campuses, and expansions at Ohio State University.
“The trend continued to decline over the entire time frame, which is not ideal,” Strong Towns Columbus noted, “but at least some of the causes are identifiable. This is a good lead to solve the problem of aging city infrastructure that might be more straightforward to tackle.”
This kind of exploration is exactly what the Decoder is designed to provoke. It doesn't diagnose problems for you. It helps you see them—and then follow up with the right questions.
Perhaps more important than the insights themselves was the process. The three-hour discussion—organized by a volunteer-run group—was surprisingly enthralling. Participants stayed fully engaged the entire time; no one wanted to leave. It turned out that talking about city finances, when made accessible and connected to real-world stakes, could be not just informative but energizing.
These are just a few of the communities that have used the Finance Decoder to spark conversations their cities have needed for years. This isn’t just a tool for finance pros—it’s for elected officials, city staff, and anyone who cares about building a place that can stand the test of time. Try the Finance Decoder for yourself, and discover what your city’s spreadsheets have been trying to say all along.
