Tomorrow will be two weeks since I asked for #seattle proposed city budget data in a format that's not a pdf or glossy diagram. Have had no reply (from Strauss' office or the budget office). Sigh.
I emailed a followup request on 10/31 and still no. If I want to do any data analysis comparing year over year budgets before they vote I will have to extract from PDFs. SIGH.
The city has a "budget dashboard" that uses PowerBI. It is wildly inaccessible. Visit here and then open it in the "full screen" mode in a new tab: https://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/budget-dashboard
Alternately, there are PDFs on the city budget office: https://www.seattle.gov/city-budget-office/budget-archives/2025-2026-proposed-budget
(The main PDF does not seem to work terribly with my screenreader but that might just be not knowing how to control VO in preview very well.)
I can haz data! Someone from CBO got back to me.
There's a DIFFERENT budget portal that is better than teh PowerBI: https://openbudget.seattle.gov/#!/year/2025/operating/0/service?vis=barChart
Exporting each section though is super annoying.
However, I have re-downloaded from https://data.seattle.gov/City-Administration/City-of-Seattle-Operating-Budget/8u2j-imqx/about_data (updated Nov 4, 2024) which now seems to have proposed 2025 data. It did NOT exist when I downloaded on Oct 9, 2024. Also some simple checks on the updated CSV suggests it's the same as the open budget portal I was pointed at so yay! #Seattle
@rachael Does the PDF have selectable text at least, or is it in image form?
@sdwilsh Havent tried yet. I know of libraries that can extract more programmatically anyway. the real challenge is mapping the line items to the open data CSVs they publish for previous years.
@sdwilsh There's a PowerBI page linked off the council budget page -- https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiMDAyMGJjMzktZjQ1ZS00Y2JlLWEzNDktNzU5OGFhMWQxNjg0IiwidCI6Ijc4ZTYxZTQ1LTZiZWItNDAwOS04Zjk5LTM1OWQ4YjU0ZjQxYiJ9 -- but I think they disabled any ability to export data from it. SIGH.