The Analyst
The hat you put on when you need to know where your money actually went.
Your city, your school district, your county, and a few districts you've never heard of each take a cut of your property tax and publish their books in documents almost no one reads. Whether your town is solvent or quietly spending down its future is a knowable fact — it's just buried. Put on the Analyst hat and that answer is yours to check. Your Chief of Staff does the reading.
Anyone wears this hat
A retired bookkeeper, a curious renter, an owner who just wants to know where it all went. No finance degree required; that's what your staff is for.
What it covers
The annual financial report, the budget, the debt schedule, and the county roll they're supposed to reconcile to. The places a town hides a shortfall are boring on purpose. This is where they hide.
What your Chief of Staff does
Reads the full 200-page report, reconciles it against the county's own certified roll, and hands you the number and the exact page it came from. You don't read the packet. You read the finding, check the source, and decide whether it's worth ten minutes at a meeting.
What you get
- The Finance Decoder — Your town's fourteen-year financial trend on one page, every figure traced to a locator.
- Your municipal page — Where your tax dollar actually goes. In Deer Park the city collects only ~28¢ of it; schools take ~43¢; the rest is county, hospital, college, flood control, and the port — separate governments, separate books. split: source-lock pending
- The Public Ledger — A records-only look at how the finances of the people you elected compare to the people they represent.
Proof the method works
Live on the Deer Park page now: a footnoted −$21.5M/yr ACFR + county roll — what the town’s development pattern nets once expenses are counted. 424 facts, 424 locators Deer Park page, 28 published corrections Corrections register — because a page that publishes its own mistakes is the only kind worth trusting. The ~28¢ / ~43¢ tax-dollar split source-lock pending publishes once it’s traced to a locator.