Tax Increment Financing

• Nebraska TIF Report
• Open/Nebraska

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is one of those dry, abstract governmental issues that has powerful effects on how we live. TIF was originally conceived to promote economic development in marginalized areas, recently, it has been used primarily to build higher income apartments and condos. Thus, the issues with using TIF policy include gentrification, relocating (rather than reducing) poverty, using public funds for private gain and governmental accountability and transparency, among others. That's why it's important to have information easily available for citizens to review and reach informed opinions.

Long run, aim would be to provide information on connections. Maybe to put together a power structure database or force graph. Potential bits of information includes:

• Which city council members voted on these projects
• Who has donated to their campaigns
• Other connections those city council members have to construction firms, developers, etc..

Links

• Nebraska Dept of Revenue TIF Annual Reports
• Omaha City Council - Better Agendas source code

Overview

The website allows users to explore TIF data by county, city, and individual TIF projects, with visualizations powered by Google Charts. The project uses Perl to generate static HTML files from an SQLite database, served via GitHub Pages.

Additional Tools for Live Preview

For live preview during development, install the following:

• entr (file watcher):
  • macOS: brew install entr
• http-server (Node.js-based static server):

  npm install -g http-server

• Optional: browser-sync (for automatic browser refresh):

  npm install -g browser-sync

Setup Instructions

1. Clone the Repository:

   git clone https://github.com/opennebraska/tif.git
   cd tif

2. Prepare the Database:

   • Follow the instructions in the /db directory to download or build a local copy of the SQLite database (db/db.sqlite3).
   • Ensure the database is placed in the db/ directory.

3. Generate the Static Site:

   • From the project root directory, run:

     perl static-www/scripts/generate_www.pl

   • This generates the static site into the static-www/www directory.

4. Verify the Output:

   • Check the generated files in static-www/www to ensure your changes are correct.

5. Deploy to GitHub Pages (Optional):

   • Commit the generated files to the static-www branch:

     git checkout static-www
     git add static-www/www
     git commit -m "Update static site"
     git push origin static-www

   • SSH into nebraska.tif.report and run git pull to update the live site.

Development with Live Preview

To see changes in real-time during development (e.g., edits to templates or scripts), use the provided live preview scripts. These scripts monitor changes to scripts, templates, and the database, automatically regenerate the site, and serve it locally.

Using watch_and_serve.sh (With Auto-Refresh)

For automatic browser refresh, use browser-sync:

1. Save the following script as watch_and_serve.sh in the project root:

   #!/bin/bash
   
   PROJECT_ROOT=$(pwd)
   STATIC_DIR="$PROJECT_ROOT/static-www/www"
   SCRIPT_DIR="$PROJECT_ROOT/static-www/scripts"
   TEMPLATES_DIR="$PROJECT_ROOT/static-www/templates"
   DB_DIR="$PROJECT_ROOT/db"
   
   echo "Starting browser-sync at http://localhost:3000..."
   browser-sync start --server "$STATIC_DIR" --files "$STATIC_DIR/**/*" --port 3000 --no-notify &
   
   BROWSER_SYNC_PID=$!
   
   echo "Watching for changes in scripts, templates, and database..."
   find "$SCRIPT_DIR" "$TEMPLATES_DIR" "$DB_DIR" -type f | entr -r bash -c "perl $SCRIPT_DIR/generate_www.pl && echo 'Site regenerated at $(date)'"
   
   kill $BROWSER_SYNC_PID

2. Make the script executable:

   chmod +x watch_and_serve.sh

3. Run the script:

   ./watch_and_serve.sh

4. The browser will open http://localhost:3000 automatically. Changes will trigger site regeneration and browser refresh.

Contributing

This is an open-source project. To contribute or report issues, visit the GitHub repository.

There are two protected branches in git, which share no common history:

• main - the source code to generate the website.
• static-www - the static website HTML/CSS/JS etc. Generated by the source code in the main branch. Deployed automatically (Netlify) to https://nebraska.tif.report.

We also have a branch to preview / QA / debug new features we're in the process of adding:

• static-www-preview - Deployed automatically (Netlify) to https://tif-preview.netlify.app. That URL is not intended for public consumption.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.