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.
