r/dataisbeautiful • u/sierramister • 10h ago
OC Gamified my town's 2027 budget [OC]
I love my growing town in Holly Springs, North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh.
I wanted to let my kids explore how our taxes are divvied up among the different services we receive, and just how complicated it is to manage a growing town.
Turns out, I've gotten a ton of really positive feedback from friends and neighbors as well. So I deployed it as standalone website.
You can explore each of the services and see not just budget data about each department, but other factoids about the services.
I think it's a really fun way to explore really complex datasets - let me know how I can improve it!
I would recommend a tablet or desktop/laptop over a phone:
https://towntoonify.com/
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u/JohnDoen86 10h ago
That's the most American budget distribution I've ever seen. $15 million to police 40k residents. That's $400 per person per year, $30 per month the PD to buy toys.
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u/monkeywaffles 10h ago edited 9h ago
15 mil / 100k for salary/car/etc is roughly* 150 cops for 55k people, ~270/100k (*yes, very handwavey back of napkin)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers
looks about average. Actually surprised the US ranked so low, like bottom third (by # officers, not by budget), but im sure the size and distribution throws it way off, with many areas not having police at all, just highway patrol or county level.
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u/nubbynickers 9h ago
A stat that blew my mind two Fridays ago was that Malcolm Gladwell pointed out how some U.S. cities are under policed.
Los Angeles and Berlin are about the same size population wise. 3.6ish million.
LA has around 8500 police officers.
Berlin has 18,000.
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u/EnoughMoneyForAHouse 9h ago
Is that not due to the amount of STUFF that American police officers have? Here in the Netherlands I hardly ever see fancy police stuff or even guns that are larger than pistols. Americans seem to have 3 cruisers per officer.
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u/nubbynickers 7h ago
I am not quite sure if that's the case. The Rookie might have us believe that LA cops are armed to the teeth.
I am curious to see how Malcolm develops the point he was making in his newest book and then look for counterpoints to it.
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u/Helpfulcloning 8h ago
Not fully comparable, berlin PD does more things. And its the capital where a bunch of embassys are - which means more security needed. But the LA figure doesn't include LA county sherrifs (another 8k) highway patrol, and local alpahbet agencies. Berlin PD does all of those jobs.
Washinngton DC and Berlin for ex have similar officers per 100k, both being capitals needing more.
But either way, LA is spending almost double per officer than berlin.
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u/SoDoSoPaYuppie 5h ago
LA County has a population of 10 million and the city of Los Angeles is one of like 90 cities that make up LA county. A lot of famous areas people associate with LA are their own city.
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u/PlatypusOld257 8h ago
La is under policed and covers a massive diverse area
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u/Gekthegecko 8h ago
LAPD also has a gang problem. Not just the gangs in the streets, the gangs running in the LAPD itself
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u/HallwayHomicide 8h ago
Pretty sure that's the LASD that famously had the gang problem.
Wouldn't surprise me if the LAPD had similar issues, but the LASD is the one that has gotten media attention
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u/LackingUtility 9h ago
Yeah, it's nuts. 20% of the budget, for a relatively small town. According to the details, there were 474 arrests in 2024, so that's about $30k per arrest.
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u/JayDutch 9h ago
Why spend tax money to improve people’s lives when we could hire more cops instead /s
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u/LackingUtility 8h ago
Huh. By comparison, my town spends 45% of their budget on the schools and 5% on the police. Also in America.
But we're in Massachusetts, where literacy is more important than fascism.
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u/Particular_Car_8446 9h ago
Unfortunately the risk of policing is higher in the US than EU countries so they require higher pay. Even with that, the police per capita is low compared to those countries.
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u/sierramister 10h ago edited 9h ago
I created the image you see by retrieving it directly from the website that I created, https://towntoonify.com/ I created that tool and loaded the data into it - both the tool and the authorship of the visualization are both authored by me.
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u/warfarematt 9h ago
url is wrong
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u/sierramister 9h ago
That was my bad - I didn't expect 15K views on this sub in 15 minutes and used up all my webhosting credits! Reset and should be good again.
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u/Sherifftruman 9h ago
This is cool. I live nearby in Morrisville which has also grown a lot and it’s always hard to get people to engage with the town and particularly understand the budget and what goes where.
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u/KoningsGap 7h ago
Would you care to share the source with me? Would love to build this for my hometown
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u/causticpop 6h ago
What department is schools/education under?
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u/beenoc 6h ago
In NC, all public schools are managed on a county level (school districts and counties are coterminous here.) So schools in Holly Springs are part of Wake County Schools and are funded by the Wake County government (same as the schools in Raleigh, and Cary, and Zebulon, and all the other towns in Wake.)
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u/PantsB 4h ago
As someone from New England where there towns are the basis of all local government, this is something that always throws me. I can look at my town's budget and get a general idea of distribution. Wake County's budget is 2+ billion for 1+ million residents with about 825m in education, so the whole thing becomes harder to scan.
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u/Frymaster99 10h ago
as someone involved in local government how do i get one