About This Project
Burg Budget exists to make it easier for residents to see how their city government spends money — without waiting for anyone to ask, and without needing to open a 50-page PDF to find the answer.
It's inspired by a small wave of independent municipal-finance transparency sites built by residents in Massachusetts towns — most directly Marblehead Data, a resident-built, open-source site that turns Marblehead's own budget, spending, and debt documents into plain-language explanations rather than PDFs only a finance professional could parse. It's in the same spirit as the state's own CTHRU checkbook for state government and the Division of Local Services' municipal databank for statewide local-government trends. Where Fitchburg doesn't yet have its own equivalent, this project tries to fill the gap using only what the city already publishes.
Corrections & Issues
Found a figure that looks wrong, or a document this should be reading but isn't? Every part of this project — the data pipeline, the validation logic, and the site itself — is open source. Please open an issue or pull request at https://github.com/nmadd57/burgbudget.
Security & Maintenance
This project's dependencies are monitored continuously and reviewed on a recurring schedule; see the repository for the current status of automated dependency updates and security reviews.