New York City’s $14 billion capital budget is an enormous document that probably only a handful of people in the universe read in full, and most of them are probably elected officials, or maybe more likely, their staffs.
So here’s a fun tool if you want to peruse the budget but just want the stuff simple and random. It doesn’t really have a name, but you can find it online here. It’s a simple, static webpage that pulls one of the line items from the budget at random and tells you how much that thing cost.
The page was created by Sam Sandberg, a Brooklyn developer, using a node.js data scraper of the budget created by Brooklyn Data Savant-in-Chief Chris Whong.
Did you know high level storm sewers will cost the city $117.1 million next year?
Or that improvements to the New York Zoological Society will run $4.1 million?
It’s a big ol’ city we have here.
