Budget Amendment Tracker
Award-winning, real-time visualization tool for tracking the Seattle City Council's budget amendments.
🏆 Awards
The tool won a national communications award in 2023.
Challenge
During budget deliberations, Council members often propose hundreds of amendments to the Mayor's proposed budget. These proposed changes were traditionally tracked in dense spreadsheets that made it difficult for the public—and even for Councilmembers themselves to understand the collective impact of these modifications. Stakeholders needed a way to see not just individual amendments, but how they affected the overall budget picture.
Solution
I conceived, designed, and built a real-time, interactive amendment tracking system that transformed how stakeholders engaged with the budget process. The tool automatically categorized amendments by department, type, and sponsor, then visualized their impact on the overall budget. The system included a public-facing dashboard showing the status of each amendment and a timeline view of how the budget evolved through the deliberatie process. Users can track the details of each amendment with total transparency - seeing a timestampped video of the discussion, the policy memo that analyzes its impacts, which councilmembers were supporting it, which departments it impacted, and more. The application also diplayed votes in real-time as they were being cast.
Technical Details
This React application paired with a lightweight database to track amendment status in real-time. I implemented a custom state management solution that ensured all users saw the same up-to-date information without page refreshes. The interface used CSS Grid and Flexbox for a responsive layout that adapted to different screen sizes. For the data visualizations, I created custom React components leveraging D3.js for rendering efficiency. A particular technical challenge was developing the comparison view that allowed users to see 'before and after' versions of budget sections side-by-side with changes highlighted. The tool integrated with the Council's legislative information system through a custom API layer, automatically pulling in new amendments as they were filed and updating their status as votes occurred.
Testimonials
- "I am loving your new budget tool. It's an absolute life-saver. Easy to use, comprehensive. And so needed! Please extend my thanks and big-time congratulations to all those involved."
- Alex Fryer, Seattle Times Editorial Board - "Your tool saved me so, so many hours of research."
- Sarah Grace Taylor, Seattle Times City Hall Beat Reporter - "Who do I thank for this very good tool that got me through budget negotiations?"
- Hannah Krieg, The Stranger City Hall Beat Reporter