This time of year, a Spokane resident’s eyes tend to be glazed over from gazing too long at a sunny lake, not from poring over the city budget.

But this is exactly the season when Spokane voters need access to all the municipal budget information they can digest. Now that the primary election has been moved up to August, this is the time when voters must make sense of political decisions and campaign promises.

Three weeks ago Mayor Dennis Hession announced his decision to hire 24 police and 10 fire employees, surprising onlookers who remembered his opposition to public safety hiring recommendations only five months earlier. It was difficult to decipher, from current budget information available to the public, just what the impact of that decision would be.

Chief Financial Officer Gavin Cooley has led an effort to change the way the city handles its budgets. Rather than allowing each department to make conservative estimates that inevitably provide a surplus each year, he’s pushing for budgets that more closely match actual revenues and expenses. He’s helped enhance the city’s reserves, and he also hopes to establish a revenue stabilization account.

At the same time, he’s frequently described the city’s long-term structural gap, which means that despite Spokane’s current rosy economic climate, the city’s expenditures will continue to outgrow its revenue.

The goal will be to ultimately craft budgets that everyone from city administrators to labor unions to voters can trust for displaying a reliable picture of local government finances.

But at the same time, City Hall has primarily relied on Cooley’s impressive verbal skills to explain its forecasts.

On the city’s Web site, citizens can follow the links from “government” to “finance and budget,” and find a list of detailed budgets and city financial reports stretching from 2003 to 2007. That’s a fine start.

But missing are summaries of departmental proposals for 2008 budgets and a clear report showing long-term budget forecasts.

Average citizens need this information, not only in the form of traditional budgets, but also in graphs, charts and summaries that can be readily understood. All of that should be posted to the city Web site and printed in easy-to-read brochures.

This week, even the head of the City Council finance committee, Councilwoman Mary Verner, said she needed more city budget information. As a candidate for mayor, she also needs to fully understand forecasts that could affect the various mayoral campaign promises.

City administrators have scrambled this week to share their expense and revenue forecasts with journalists. Next they need to make certain the average voter can understand these forecasts, too.