Your local government, in plain English.

Then I just kept going and put up all the data I could find on the city's website, whether it was old or current budgets, auditor reports, ordinances, or info from Minnesota and Anoka County regarding taxes. I also parsed the records to pull out specific data on roads, city equipment, and vehicles. In a larger city these probably would not be top-level subjects for a city transparency website, but in our little Nowthen, spending on roads and vehicles are by far our largest ticket spending items.

After getting all of this information up on the website I realized it might be useful to explain exactly how property taxes and city budgeting works. As the new guy on the City Council last year I learned a lot of the specifics of property taxes, levies, tax capacity, city budgets, roads, and much more. These are confusing topics that can be hard to wrap your head around, and given their confusing nature, it is easy for residents, elected officials, or city staff to make claims that are nearly unverifiable. To verify them you would need to spend time sorting through financial documents, minutes, county tax records, and more. When you rely only on elected officials to give you this information, you are still relying on someone else's framing. The point of this site is to let you check the record yourself.

I am a personal injury and work comp attorney by trade and do not have any formal training in finances or taxes. I have tried my hardest to present this information in an objective fashion. Some of the conclusions and assumptions are my own (supported with evidence), but I have tried hard to only make assumptions that are very well supported by the math.

Every so often I will go past the numbers and tell you what I actually think, or walk you through why I voted the way I did on something in front of the council where there was a split vote. When I do that, you will know it. Anything that is my own opinion or my explanation of a vote sits in a clearly labeled box, tagged as opinion, so you never have to guess where the records and the math stop and my personal take starts. Treat those for exactly what they are: one council member's view, sourced where I can source it, and easy to skip if all you want is the facts.

I personally hate it when I have to listen to two politicians making the exact opposite claims about the same data. All I hear is a bunch of bickering and fighting and it makes me tune out and stop caring, because diving into the actual budget and taxes and revenues and spending issues would be a full-time job if I researched everything for myself. So I finished this website from that perspective. The goal here is not to advocate for any one position or direction for the city; it is to enable you as a city resident to look at the numbers and records for yourself and be able to verify what elected officials are telling you.

There is a lot of math for sure on this website, but I am confident that Nowthen residents are intelligent enough to track it, or to use the tools on this website to get at the answers or information they need. That is it. Transparency is the goal. Hopefully you learn something along the way. My only goal is to help Nowthen residents access the data for themselves, reach their own conclusions, and hold elected officials, including me, accountable.

There is nothing special about people on the council. We are just Nowthen residents who currently have the time and desire to give back to the city. We are wrong just as often as anyone is, I am sure. None of us have formal training for this role, so hold us accountable. Even if it is used to hold me accountable. Cite the actual record, tell me exactly what I got wrong, and show where the source proves it. It would make me so happy if this website empowered someone to correct an incorrect assertion or opinion of mine and resulted in a better-run city.

Someone always has a problem with stuff like this. I am ok if you do not like me or think this data should not be so transparent, but if you have a problem with this website and the data on it, please be specific. I will correct any errors that are pointed out, I will take out bad assumptions that are not supported by sufficient evidence, and I will correct math, explanations, or anything else that needs correcting. I welcome any and all feedback or corrections. But again, please be specific. A general complaint that the site is wrong is hard to fix; a citation, page, number, name, or date lets me clarify or correct the data on this website.

In addition to Nowthen city data I also added financial, tax, and city services info from all other cities in Anoka County. I did this because in council meetings we often look to other cities to see how they handle a particular issue, expense, or service. The site is built from public records and public data pulled from official city, county, and state sources, but it can still have gaps or mistakes. If you have suggestions about different ways to use or display the data, or to obtain data I do not yet have on this website, please feel free to share your thoughts and feedback.

I did use AI to aid me in making this website and to work with the data. I used other AI to double-check the work, and other AI to triple-check. I cannot claim to have read and personally verified every number or word on this website. In parsing the records to extract the info on roads and equipment and other specific issues, some stuff likely was missed and some stuff could have been added more than once. If you are wondering why in a certain year there were two identical road projects for the same cost to the same set of roads, the answer is probably that it was just counted twice and needs to be corrected. This website is a work in progress and I will continue to make corrections, edits, and refine the data to make it useful.