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About What Towns Pay & how we source data

What Towns Pay is run by a working municipal IT director who got tired of negotiating software renewals blind. Local governments publish what they pay in council agendas, staff reports, resolutions and attached quotes, but it's scattered across thousands of agenda portals. We collect it in one free place.

Where the data comes from

• Public meeting documents: agenda packets, staff reports, resolutions, ordinances, minutes and attached vendor quotes or order forms.
• Portals such as Legistar, Granicus, CivicClerk/CivicPlus Agenda Center, CivicWeb, eScribe, destinyhosted and city document centers.
• 117 of 119 current records come straight from the government's own document. 2 come from a secondary summary of a public meeting and are labeled secondary source until we confirm the primary document.

How a record gets in

1. We find a candidate document through searches and agenda-portal monitoring.
2. We open the document and record the amount, term, annual cost, setup fee, escalator and date exactly as written.
3. Anything we calculate (for example, an average annual cost from a multi-year total) is labeled derived. Anything ambiguous is marked Medium confidence with a note.
4. An automated checker re-opens every source link and confirms the dollar figure still appears in the document.
5. If we can't verify it, it doesn't go in.

What the numbers mean (and don't)

A council-approved amount is often a not-to-exceed cap, may include hardware, training or contingency, and reflects that entity's size and module mix. Use these records as benchmarks and negotiating context, not quotes. “Date” is the meeting or document date. A record on an agenda isn't proof it passed unless the status says “Approved.”

Our independence promise

Corrections

If a record is wrong, email the document that shows the correct figure to [email protected].