At the heart of Tampa Monitor is the weekly agenda for Tampa City Council. What is up for a vote this week. It’s the public’s last chance to weigh in and often significant decisions are being made while issues not on the agenda overshadow the discourse. The goal here is to try and make it a little easer to keep up.
First, I’ve developed a series of scripts that parses the clerk’s version the city publishes through Onbase. I’m pulling it into machine readable format (which allows me to do things like analyze motions), then its run through a script that strips out extraneous text on the item description for readability. Next, each item has a Summary Sheet or Staff Report supporting document. Another script parses the file adding the Background section or summary to a collapsible section to maintain readability. There if you need more context beyond the description but tucked away otherwise. Finally, the links to all supporting documents are included and mirrored. The mirroring is a result of how Onbase changes supporting document links when it’s updated during the week.
Second, I write a preview posted by Monday morning that’s available as an email newsletter. Here I try to add context to items that have been working their way through the process. What exactly is being voted on and where in the process the vote is. And if I see something that I think needs more information or question what’s provided, I bring it up knowing there’s 3 days for anyone who agrees to ask for it.
On rare occasions I take a strong position on an item. More often, my issues are with either the lack of, or the not following processes. If you tell the public this is how something works, and then you don’t follow that, you’re contributing to the erosion of public trust in government.
Sometimes issues with strong public opinion need more context than a preview can support and I write up a longer post. It’s a tough balance to preview a 100 item agenda. It’s part of why the first part was built and something I’m continuing to explore. Keyword notifications are next. Stay tuned.
To balance any potential bias in the previews or explainer posts I’ve also tried to build informational tools.
The first was the Tampa land use map. To my knowledge there still isn’t a convenient way to view both the current and future land use designations for a location in one place. The layers are can be toggled on or off to view the difference.
Additionally, I built a database to track current development. Which in turn is used with the land use map to display the land use cases that are on the current agenda. With a glance you can see if anything is up for a vote in your neighborhood.
Most recently I launched city council meeting archives. In one place you can view the full meeting transcript with the recorded video. Search for a topic discussed, click the timestamp in the transcript and the video plays at that point in the meeting. Additionally, the agenda is available as a slide out tab for reference, including links to the supporting documents. Cross meeting search is still a planned feature.
A little about how this started.
Born and raised in Tampa, I spent my early years in indie restaurant kitchens around town. In 2005 while attending Hillsborough (Community) College I fell in love with building things for the web and open source and it’s been an adventure since.
Somewhere around 2016 I discovered 18f through their open source development on Github and became interested in the idea of “civic tech”. A year later, as Hurricane Irma was barreling towards Florida I got involved with a project tracking hurricane shelters. That led to getting involved with Code for America’s brigade network (now defunct) and exposure to more people in the civic tech space, both people working inside and out of government to modernize and improve digital services at all layers of government.
After a successful end to the shelter project I headed a lesson I learned through that experience to focus on local. Not knowing exactly how or where to contribute, I began watching council meetings. Among the things I learned is no matter the issue, at some point it passes through a council vote. And that there was an information vacuum. I’ve tried to fill some of that space. (If you see a real-time digital map from the state or county during a hurricane, that’s a direct result of the work I contributed to working with the Red Cross who manage the National Shelter System. That didn’t exist prior to our work and it’s something I’m proud of).
What’s Next?
Good question. For now I will continue with the weekly previews while maintaining and improving the aforementioned tools.
Figuring out long term sustainability is also important. What that looks like I’m still not sure, probably a combination of spending more time promoting and soliciting monthly supporters while building connections to provide consulting services.
I have been adamant I don’t intend to do subscriber only content but premium features on free tools is another avenue I’ll explore. Both to make sure hard costs are covered but to recoup some of the development time. I hinted at keyword notifications and that might be the next thing I build. Current thinking is it would be free for up to 3 keywords with a more liberal cap for yearly/monthly supporters.
If that’s something you’re interested in or there’s something you think might be useful to the community, please get in touch.
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