Cook County

Updated Cook County Data: Annual Salaries

Josh Kalov

Cook County SealNew Cook County salary data is now available that shows salary and position titles as of November 24, 2015. In order to maintain access to previous salary data updates this data has been posted in a new dataset available at https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/Finance-Administration/Comptroller-Annual-Salaries-2015-November-24/9tzu-m4zi .

Previous Salary Datasets:

  • https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/Finance-Administration/Comptroller-Annual-Salaries-2014-August-28/hdna-35se
  • https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/Finance-Administration/Comptroller-Annual-Salaries-2013/fxa5-tdd8
  • https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/Finance-Administration/Comptroller-Annual-Salaries-2011-September-22/wb2w-sasu
  • https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/Finance-Administration/Comptroller-Annual-Salaries-2011-September-16/q8p4-325d

A related dataset is the Fiscal Year 2016 Executive Recommendation Budget Summary of Positions: https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/Finance-Administration/Budget-Fiscal-Year-2016-Executive-Recommendation-B/3p3z-y5re

Updated Cook County Data: Historical & Updated GIS Data

Josh Kalov

Cook County January 1831Over the past several weeks, the Cook County GIS Department has added updated taxing district boundary data to Cook County’s Open Data Portal. Datasets for the 2012 tax year versions of these boundaries were previously added to the portal. As part of this update, district boundaries for both tax years 2013 and 2014 have been added. In order to maintain the historical datasets, each year is uploaded as a new dataset.

The new datasets are:

ccgisdata – Community College Tax Dist 2013 ccgisdata – Community College Tax District 2014
ccgisdata – Elementary School Tax District 2013 ccgisdata – Elementary School Tax District 2014
ccgisdata – Fire Protection Tax Dist 2013 ccgisdata – Fire Protection Tax Dist 2014
ccgisdata – High School Tax Dist 2013 ccgisdata – High School Tax Dist 2014
ccgisdata – Library Tax Dist 2013 ccgisdata – Library Tax Dist 2014
ccgisdata – Lot 2013 ccgisdata – Lot 2014
ccgisdata – Metropolitan Water Reclamation Tax Dist 2013 ccgisdata – Metropolitan Water Reclamation Tax Dist 2014
ccgisdata – Park Tax Dist 2013 ccgisdata – Park Tax Dist 2014
ccgisdata – Political Township 2013 ccgisdata – Political Township 2014
ccgisdata – Right-of-Way 2013 ccgisdata – Right-of-Way 2014
ccgisdata – Sanitary Tax Dist 2013 ccgisdata – Sanitary Tax Dist 2014
ccgisdata – Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Districts 2013 ccgisdata – Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Districts 2014
ccgisdata – Unit School Tax Dist 2013 ccgisdata – Unit School Tax Districts 2014

New Cook County Data: Fiscal Year 2016 Executive Budget Recommendation

Josh Kalov

On Wednesday, the Cook County Department of Budget and Management Services released the Executive Recommendations for the Fiscal Year 2016. As with previous years the Budget is available as a series of PDFs.

As part of our work with Cook County Open Data we helped create and post three datasets as part of this year’s Executive Recommendation Budget release:

  1. Budget Summary By Object Classification: This dataset lists by department the Department Request and Executive Recommendation dollar amounts for each line item. (We helped publish this data last year too.)
  2. Budget Summary Of Positions By Business Unit: This dataset lists by department and business unit the proposed position counts and salaries.
  3. Capital Equipment: This dataset contains a list of capital equipment projects along with the requested dollar amount.

With these dataset releases we made several improvements over last year’s Executive Recommended Budget release:

  • Timeliness: This year we wanted to try to release open data on the same day as the PDFs were released. Over the past several weeks we have been working with staff in the Department of Budget and Management Services to make that possible for these datasets.
  • New Types of Datasets: Last year only the Budget Summary By Object Classification dataset was released. We wanted to identify additional data that is part of the budget process. In preparation for this year’s budget season we went through last year’s Budget Book PDFs to identify potential new datasets. From there, we worked with staff in the Department of Budget and Management Services to identify who is responsible for each type of data and to develop the final open dataset.
  • Data Lens: We wanted to go beyond just providing the data tables so we took this as an opportunity to try out Socrata’s Data Lens view that was launched earlier this year. The Data Lens views have interactive graphs and search functionality. They act as an alternative view to the spreadsheet style of the main dataset. We have Data Lens views for all 3 datasets:
    • Budget Summary by Object Classification
    • Budget Summary Of Positions By Business Unit
    • Capital Equipment Projects
  • Open Data in Context: While the Open Data Portal makes it easy to find these budget datasets if you are on the portal, we wanted to ensure that users going to the county’s website to learn about the proposed budget had easy access to the open data and Data Lens visualizations. To accomplish that, for the first time this year, links to the Data Lens views are included with the PDF links on the budget page.

Over the next several weeks there will be Departmental Reviews and Public Hearings on the Executive Recommendation Budget. See the Cook County Budget Calendar for the complete schedule including links to live streams and public hearing speaker registration.

Cook County Executive Recommendation Budget FY2016

Cook County FY2016 Preliminary Budget Forecast Public Hearing

Josh Kalov

On July 30, Cook County hosted a public hearing on the Fiscal Year 2016 Preliminary Budget Forecast. 32 people spoke at the hearing, and two speakers spoke about Cook County Open Data.

Demond Drummer, representing the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, spoke about the importance of property parcels open data in the effort to reduce vacant city lots through programs like Large Lots. LargeLots.org utilizes Cook County Parcel and Address Point open data alongside open data from the City of Chicago.

Forest Gregg of DataMade spoke about the importance of open data for businesses and encouraged a continuation and expansion of releasing open data. He encouraged the board and county to expand release of real estate open data and to update it regularly.

Video of the Public Hearing can be seen here. Demond’s comments begin at 55:30 and Forest’s begin at 57:40.

The Fiscal Year 2016 Preliminary Budget Forecast was released as a PDF. Previous budget and financial data can be found on Cook County’s Open Data Portal.

New Cook County Data: Rivers, Streams, and Lakes

Josh Kalov

Two new Cook County GIS Open Datasets provide information on the bodies of water in Cook County:

  • Lakes and Rivers shows the location and shape of flowing water features greater than five feet in width and major standing water bodies as polygon data
  • Rivers and Streams represents, as a single line, the interpreted midline of flowing water features. Both of these datasets are developed from aerial photography. These are spatial datasets and can be exported as Shapefile or KML