How should I categorize municipal legislation?

Question

I'm working on a site to help Chicagoans understand what their city council is doing. As part of that effort, I would like to roll up the many different types of legislation into a handful of comprehensible bins.

I know that cities often delegate different tasks to their councils, but are there any sources or examples of taxonomies of municipal legislation?

Here is what I have so far (The prefixing number is the number of pieces of legislation of this type in the previous month):

Ward Matters

Residents

• 212 Handicapped Parking Permit
• 18 Senior citizen sewer refund
• 2 Condo Refuse Claim (if you are a condo owner occupier, you can ask the city to refund you your cost for disposing of refuse)
• 15 Residential permit parking

Local Business Permits and Privileges

• 161 Sidewalk cafe permit
• 146 Grant of privilege in public way (needed for sidewalk cafes, awnings, or canopies)
• 63 Awnings permit
• 25 Sign permits
• 15 Canopy permit
• 24 Physical barrier exemption (if a commercial driveway could connect to an alleyway, the property owner would have to build a barrier to prevent that... unless they get an exemption from the council)

Land Use

• 33 Zoning Reclassification
• 13 Liquor and Package Store Restrictions (the municipal code has a section that lists areas where new liquor licenses cannot be issued)

Local Economic Development

• 1 Tax Incentives (businesses can get various tax incentives with the support of the council)
• 1 Tax Increment Financing, (these are special taxing districts)
• 4 Special Service Area, (these are too)

Church and Non-Profits

• 4 Free Permits or License (aldermen can request that various fees be waved, usually this is just for churches and non profits)
• 1 Tag Day Permits (in order to get on the street and solicit money, you need a permit)

Parking

• 4 Parking Meters (installing, relocating and removing meters)
• 56 Loading/Standing/Tow Zone
• 8 Parking Restrictions

Traffic

• 1 Traffic Direction
• 12 Traffic signs and signals
• 3 Vehicle Weight Limitation

Festivals

??

• 2 Historical Landmark

Small Claims

• 9 Damage to property claim
• 131 Damage to vehicle claim
• 6 Settlement of Claims
• 3 Excessive water rate claim (if you think that the city has messed up your water bill, you can make a claim)

Honorifics

• 59 Honorific (congratulations, condolences, etc)
• 7 Honorary street (honorary street names)

City Wide Issues

Settlement Agreements

Business

• 2 Vacation of Public Street (the city basically gives a street to a property holder)
• 5 Acquisition, Sale, and Conveyance of Property (buying, selling, and otherwise transferring property)
• 1 Easement Agreement
• 1 Lease agreement
• 2 Intergovernmental Agreement

Appointment

Budget

Municipal Code

Answer 1

I may have a bad case of hammer-seeks-nail, as I'm currently working fairly full time on a federal legislative markup system with CATO called Deepbills that tags federal legislation in a way that tracks what code it modifies. But here's my thought, based on my experience with how that works combined with my years of poring through the DC code:

Rather than a system that applies a (possibly) subjective classification to the proposed legislation based on reading, what about instead using a system of classification/tagging against the existing code and then tracking what the proposed legislation modifies? The organization of the Chicago municipal code already provides a very loose taxonomy of sorts:

• TITLE 1 GENERAL PROVISIONS
• TITLE 2 CITY GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
• TITLE 3 REVENUE AND FINANCE
• TITLE 4 BUSINESSES, OCCUPATIONS AND CONSUMER PROTECTION
• TITLE 5 HOUSING AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
• TITLE 6 RESERVED
• TITLE 7 HEALTH AND SAFETY
• TITLE 8 OFFENSES AFFECTING PUBLIC PEACE, MORALS AND WELFARE
• TITLE 9 VEHICLES, TRAFFIC AND RAIL TRANSPORTATION
• TITLE 10 STREETS, PUBLIC WAYS, PARKS, AIRPORTS AND HARBORS
• TITLE 11 UTILITIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
• TITLE 12 RESERVED
• TITLE 13 BUILDINGS AND CONSTRUCTION
• TITLE 14 RESERVED*
• TITLE 15 FIRE PREVENTION
• TITLE 16 LAND USE
• TITLE 17 CHICAGO ZONING ORDINANCE
• TITLE 18 BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE

Certain sections are related to certain issues and may be very specific if you drill down. Titles 16 & 17 relate specifically to land use and zoning. If you look at 16-18 it regards open space, 16-18-40 is the related fee schedule and 16-18-120 specifies the Paulina Street Corridor and outlines where exactly it is.

So any proposed legislation which referenced 16-18 could be land-use related and classified as of interest to anyone doing new development or renovation (but not replacement); referencing 16-18-40 indicates that it's cost relevant. Similar logic works for many other sections -- 9-52 is bicycles.

The advantages of this as a taxonomic basis is that you'll make your classification something that could more easily be done via machine. It's somewhat limited, but a second level of taxonomy or tagging done against the code could provide a more flexible alert system. Anything modifying title 9 is transportation, 9-52 is bicycles, 9-68-020 is residential parking permits. 9-68-022 is one of several Wrigley areas which is firmly defined.

By using a looser initial taxonomy and then applying attributes to code sections you could even use a geographic area definition in an automated way. Given an address XYZ you can then see when it falls within areas impacted by legislation: if it falls within the area described by 9-68-022 then you know any modifications to that section would impact that person.

That example is probably more specific than you care about, but the same would apply to any broader neighborhood definitions.