PRI TIF data - Tax Increment Financing
Details
Agenda:
We're pretty excited about converting Nebraska Department of Revenue PAD reports (http://www.revenue.nebraska.gov/PAD/research/tif_reports.html) into a web app, using Angular.js and who knows what else. Also, we'll be chasing more data / spreadsheet work.
Who should attend:
- Data-oriented folks. If you can work with spreadsheets, you're hired!
- Technical types who can think in terms of serving up data (so far we've got some Perl, some Python).
Bring a laptop with you! CoVis has Internet.
Resources:
- Google Drive (https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2w5Td93SqcnfjRuXy1uRXRCN2FIYUt6UXJTdkRqOXpxWE0teUlSSm80ZzdGVGM4cjlCUlk&usp=sharing)
- pri-tif on github (https://github.com/opennebraska/pri-tif) (results (https://gist.github.com/jhannah/6b7bdab2c32822af7d99))
More Information on TIF:
Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is one of those dry, abstract governmental issues that has powerful effects on how we live. TIF was originally conceived to promote economic development in marginalized areas, recently, it has been used primarily to build higher income apartments and condos. Thus, the issues with using TIF policy include gentrification, relocating (rather than reducing) poverty, using public funds for private gain and governmental accountability and transparency, among others. That's why it's important to have information easily available for citizens to review and reach informed opinions.
Long run, aim would be to provide information on connections. Maybe to put together a power structure database or force graph.
Which city council members voted on these projects;
- Who has donated to their campaigns;
- Other connections those city council members have to construction firms, developers, etc..
-- Jack Dunn, PRI (http://prineb.org)