Local Budget Visualizer

Status: Research

The Problem

Municipal budgets are often hundreds of pages of dense tables and incomprehensible line items. Most citizens have no idea how their tax dollars are actually being spent.

Our Solution

Local Budget Visualizer transforms complex budget documents into interactive, understandable visualizations. See at a glance:

  • Where your tax money goes
  • Year-over-year spending changes
  • Comparison with similar municipalities
  • Per-capita spending breakdowns

Features

  • Interactive budget exploration
  • Historical trend analysis
  • Comparative metrics
  • Drill-down into specific departments
  • Export and share capabilities
  • Mobile-friendly design

Why This Matters

Transparency enables accountability. When citizens can easily understand how their money is spent, they can:

  • Make informed voting decisions
  • Advocate for budget priorities
  • Identify waste and inefficiency
  • Hold elected officials accountable

Technical Approach

We’re building tools to:

  1. Parse budget documents (PDF, spreadsheets, etc.)
  2. Standardize data across different municipalities
  3. Create intuitive visualizations
  4. Make the data searchable and shareable

Get Involved

This project needs people who care about civic engagement, data visualization, and government transparency. If that’s you, check out our Get Involved page.