City website expands transparency

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - How dirty is your favorite public swimming pool? Or your favorite restaurant? The city is trying to make it easy for you to find that out and more, a lot more.

When the mayor promised more transparency on the city's website; he meant it. Even with things you may think, who would want to see that?

“Who knows who wants to see it, that's the whole point,” said Albuquerque Mayor R.J. Berry. “We have all of this data forever and ever and ever. It's been sitting here in a filing cabinet; it's always been available for public inspection.”

But now it's available on the city's web site; abqview .

“You will see all kinds of things from restaurant reports to my credit card statement to contracts to political contributions,” said Berry.

Some of the most recent additions may sound a little strange.

You can scroll through restaurant inspections for every eatery in town; some of the info dates back a decade. The list even explains if the inspector showed up because of complaints, or just to see how things were going.

Ever wonder about the pool your kids spent so much time in this summer? You can see what inspectors found at pools across the city, public and private; and even why some were shut down.

This is only the beginning.

“This (smart phone) is changing the world and we want to be, the city of Albuquerque, on the forefront of this,” said Berry.

The mayor is asking some of the best techies to develop apps for smart phones that would make the city even more transparent and convenient.

“What if you had an app that said where the parking spaces that are available?” said Berry.

Berry says he knows every time something gets added to the web, “Certainly there are risks to being more transparent in that there can be things that come up that are embarrassing sometimes.”

But, he says that helps the city address issues and run smoother and more efficiently. Something else cool you can do on abqview is watch bus stops live to see the bus arrive. The mayor says it's a quick way to see if your bus is running on time.

You can still find more city information including the full city budget, salaries and full expense reports.