PRI Hack Night

Jack Dunn could use some developer help refreshing an Omaha City Council database with recent Tax Increment Financing (TIF) data.

Let's get together and get this done! :D See you there!

• Jay Hannah
  402-598-7782

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From: Jack Dunn
Subject: Re: [open-ne] Re: Sectioning up the Omaha City Council Journal...
Date: June 19, 2015 at 1:44:07 AM CDT
To: Matt Steele , Nate Benes
Cc: open-ne@googlegroups.com, Jay Hannah

All,

The objective of this project is to update two PRI reports on Tax Increment Financing (TIF). These two reports, which can be found on the Policy Research & Innovation website (www.prineb.org), cover TIF projects for the City of Omaha for the years 2008 through 2011. I would like to update these reports with data from 2012 through 2014.

The source data are located in the Archived City Council Journals, which are the minutes of past City Council meetings. The Journals are PDFs. I have no interest in the City Council Agendas for this project.

The Journals for 2014 are found at:
http://www.cityofomaha.org/cityclerk/city-council/journals-a-videos
Prior Journals are found at:
http://www.cityofomaha.org/cityclerk/archived-city-council-documents

The variables of interest are found in two spreadsheet from a 2011 PRI report:
http://www.progressiveresearchinstitute.org/Papers/2011/TIF/revenue_lost.pdf
http://www.progressiveresearchinstitute.org/Papers/2011/TIF/ctl_project_name-project_date.pdf

Both spreadsheets are cited in that 2011 TIF report titled: What is Tax Increment Financing (and Why Should Anyone Care)?
http://www.prineb.org/Papers/2011/TIF/tif_white_paper2.pdf

A second, follow up report was published in 2012:
http://www.prineb.org/Papers/2012/TIFReportUpdateFinal.pdf

It would be a great help just to go through the Journals from 2012 through 2014 and capture the TIF ordinance description and attached files. If there is a way to capture the variables of interest mentioned above for each proposed TIF ordinance, even better!

There's more that I would like to propose; for instance, tracking the real estate, banking and construction connections including campaign contributions for City Council members, but let's take one project at a time.

I'm sure I have left questions unanswered, so please let me know what they are and I'll do my best to respond.

Thank you,

Jack Dunn
Co-Executive Director
Policy Research & Innovation