Question about request: All property tax documents on NYCProperty
Asked by John Krauss on May 21, 2015.
1 answer from John Krauss.
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All property tax documents on NYCProperty
John Krauss sent this request to the Department of Finance of New York City, NY
I find it unlikely that it should require 1000 hours of developer time to obtain these PDFs. They’re already accessible, one-by-one, on a web interface. I’ve already been downloading them from there, and in the course of eight months I could scrape the entire city.
I have no intention of paying $50,000 for documents that I could scrape in the same (or less) time. Because of that, I’d be willing to drop the matter entirely.
However, I am curious how they could justify that sort of time and expense. Is it worth asking for a breakdown, and if so, how?
Thank you!
Furthermore, their math doesn’t make any sense. I’m guessing they arrived at 6 months from 1000 hours (8 hours per day * 21 workdays per month * 6 months = 1008 hours). However, in the same email they said that this developer needs to do other work at the same time.
In short, I think this time assessment (and thus expense) is BS, and I’m wondering what recourse I have.