💵 BetterBlockGPT Now has NYC Spend Data

🌟 Author’s Note

Happy Sunday to the 126 members of the Better Block Project 🔥 Last week’s response to the BetterBlockGPT launch was much stronger than I expected, with one member stating:

“First time I've been excited about a GPT or any other LLM”

Given the interest and it’s fun to build this, I made a number of enhancements to BetterBlockGPT this past week to make it better. Here is the TLDR:

• I’ve add NYC agency spend data to BetterBlockGPT, so you can see how agencies like NYPD and DSNY are spending taxpayer funds

• I broadened the 311 search to include all of NYC and data for the last 12 months, so you can ask BetterBlockGPT more questions

BetterBlockGPT is completely free, so use it as you like to support your advocacy in your neighborhood, and share with others on your block to help in their efforts as well.

💵 BetterBlockGPT Now has NYC Spend Data

NYC’s budget and tax revenue is a hot topic right now. Moody’s, a credit rating agency, revised NYC’s outlook from stable to negative. NYC is trying to close a $7B budget gap, with ideas ranging from charging for on street parking to cutting the estate tax to exemption to $750,000. Regardless of your perspective on these new tax proposals (you all know I hate them but I’ll keep my mouth shut right now 😇), it’s more important than ever to understand how NYC is spending taxpayer dollars.

This is why I’ve added NYC Agency Spend Data directly into BetterBlockGPT. The NYC Agency Spend includes spend data from 15 agencies such as NYPD, Social Services, DSNY and the Parks Department. Remarkably, the dataset doesn’t include Department of Education, the largest portion of the NYC budget (and one many suspect is significantly overspending). You can ask questions like:

1. How much did the NYPD spend on overtime last year? $1.8B

2. Which agency spends the most on salary? Department of Social Services at $13.2B

3. What’s the breakdown of the NYC Park’s budget? $432M in maintenance and $56M in capital projects

🏢 Now Ask BetterBlockGPT About all of NYC, and more

After last week’s launch, I made several enhancements to BetterBlockGPT based on how users asked questions and expanded the data set. Some changes I made include:

• You can now ask “Show me all trash complaints for a particular zip code”. Instead of searching by block, you can search by zip code or borough

• Data is now available for all of NYC and there is no time restriction. Searches will default to Brooklyn for the last 3 months, but you can ask for more data if you need it

Other improvements I made to the app include adding a usage limit (this does cost money so BetterBlockGPT does have a daily question limit!), adding a test plan to ensure releases don’t break prior questions and ensuring sources are always cited.

🏇 What’s next

My plan is to continue to audit how people ask questions to BetterBlockGPT to improve how it answers questions. I am also eager to add more data sources, so if there is public NYC Data you would love to get, please let me know and I will add it in. Next up, I expect to add in NYC Building Permit Data and NYPD Arrest data into the engine.

That’s all for this week’s update! As usual, if you like what we’re doing at the Better Block Project, forward this to someone you know that is looking to get more engaged in the neighborhood.

See you next week,

David