Raleigh

Raleigh Civic Data

A read-only CLI for the City of Raleigh's public civic data and services. It discovers datasets from the live ArcGIS Hub catalog, queries ArcGIS layers, exports imagery, geocodes and reverse-geocodes addresses, reads GoRaleigh GTFS and GTFS-Realtime feeds, searches the guest-public Permit and Development Portal, lists public RaleighNC.gov content, and extracts public eSCRIBE meetings.

All operations are read-only and use fixed endpoint contracts. HTTPS is required except for explicitly acknowledged RFD report lookups, whose upstream site supports only plain HTTP. No API key, sign-in, payment, or submission flow is implemented.

Quick Start

# List live datasets
scripts/raleigh catalog

# Search the catalog
scripts/raleigh search "food inspection"

# Show a dataset's live metadata
scripts/raleigh info "Raleigh Dog Parks"

# Query records
scripts/raleigh query "Food Inspections" --where "SCORE < 70" --limit 20

# Export to CSV
scripts/raleigh download "Raleigh Dog Parks" -f csv -o dog_parks.csv

Commands

Dataset discovery

Imagery

imagery catalog lists only publicly readable services. Folders whose listing requires a token (currently Imagery and Utilities) are skipped and reported as restricted rather than failing the command; the daily live canary tracks them the same way.

Geocoding

Batch output preserves every original CSV column and adds input_id, match_address, score, lat, lon, and status. If an input already uses one of those names, the added result column receives a geocode_ prefix.

Transit

Development records

Civic content

Police incidents

Fire incidents

Active incidents (RWECC)

Public meetings

Output Flags

References

Pitfalls

• Live catalog: The catalog is discovered from the Hub at runtime. Cache it with --cache-dir for repeated use.
• ImageServer: Never append /0 to an ImageServer root. Use the dedicated imagery commands.
• MapServer tables: Some layers are tabular (type: Table). The CLI automatically omits geometry for non-spatial layers.
• WHERE clauses: Strings must be single-quoted: NAME='Millbrook-Exchange'.
• ArcGIS dates: Returned as Unix milliseconds; divide by 1000 for standard timestamps.
• Guest development portal: Uses an undocumented public application API. The adapter is isolated and may change if the upstream UI changes; set RALEIGH_DISABLE_DEVELOPMENT=1 to disable it independently.
• Civic relationships: Public content commands accept --relationship FIELD=ID; text, date, and relationship matching is client-side after bounded pagination.
• eSCRIBE: HTML-based extraction with a weaker compatibility contract than structured APIs.
• Police incidents: Locations are block-level and may be randomized or redacted. Empty coordinates are suppressed, not presented as points. This data does not include arrests, convictions, or dispositions. The CrimeMapper 90-day feed is not in the curated Hub catalog and is resolved by item ID.
• Fire incidents: RFD deprecated incident_type/incident_type_description for records after 2026-01-01, replaced by incident_group_name, incident_subgroup_code, and incident_type_name. The fire commands normalize both eras into stable _ keys without fabricating cross-era mappings, and preserve raw fields in JSON. Incident types 300–399 and 661 are excluded by RFD for EMS/privacy. The full-history station field is unpopulated for most records after early 2021; the past-month feed provides station_name.
• Fire reports and inspections: Report summaries use the structured ArcGIS past-month layer first. RFD fallback, narratives, and inspection searches cross unencrypted HTTP and require --acknowledge-insecure-rfd on every invocation. Date fallback also requires --allow-rfd-fallback and only runs after ArcGIS returns no records. Empty searches, redirects, unexpected markup, and schema drift fail closed. Invoice links are neither followed nor exposed.
• Published public-safety statistics: police stats/reports and year-based fire stats/reports read the official RaleighNC.gov publication indexes at runtime. Inline values are labeled official_published_statistics; PDF links are returned without extracting their contents. These outputs are not recomputed from incident rows. RFD medical totals remain aggregate-only and must never be joined to or used to infer incident records excluded for privacy.
• Fire protection: The Wake County MAR Fire Protection table is a non-spatial table keyed by CSAID. Address input is composed through the Raleigh locator and the Wake County MAR Addresses layer; if the address cannot be resolved to a unique CSAID, supply --csaid directly. Distances are source-provided road-network values; the source does not advertise units. This data does not expose hydrant locations, only nearest-hydrant distance. It must not be used for emergency response.
• Active incidents (RWECC): Uses an undocumented public application endpoint (incidents.rwecc.com/getdata). The adapter is isolated and may break if the upstream contract changes; set RALEIGH_DISABLE_INCIDENTS=1 to disable it independently. This is a filtered active feed, NOT all 911 calls and NOT authoritative emergency status. An empty response does not prove zero incidents. Cache lifetime is 90 seconds.
• URL allowlist: Only fixed public hosts are dereferenced; arbitrary URLs are rejected.
• Transit realtime: Requires google.protobuf>=6.31.1,<7. The vendored GTFS-Realtime binding was generated with protoc 31.1 and does not replace the runtime.

Safety Boundaries

• Read-only operations only. No auth, write, payment, submission, or private-data endpoints.
• All remote hosts and paths are fixed. The general client remains HTTPS-only; the isolated RFD adapter permits only four documented plain-HTTP read contracts after explicit acknowledgement.
• Cached data is refreshed with --refresh or when the cache expires.
• Report stale or unavailable endpoints via catalog-check.

When not to use

• Do not use this skill for private, authenticated, or non-public city data. It cannot sign in, pay fees, submit forms, or access internal systems.
• Do not use it for non-Raleigh jurisdictions. The host allowlist is fixed to City of Raleigh and GoRaleigh endpoints.
• Do not rely on it for write operations, real-time emergency dispatch, or legally authoritative records. Data is read-only and may be cached.
• Do not use it when the task requires GTFS-Realtime and a compatible protobuf runtime is unavailable. Install protobuf>=6.31.1,<7 first or stick to static GTFS commands.
• For general web scraping, research outside Raleigh civic data, or interactive browser tasks, use a more appropriate skill instead.