Budget, taxes and debt

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about budget, taxes and debt, and how contentious it was, year by year.

Scores of the written record, normalized by era. Minutes are the clerk's summaries, not transcripts: tone is muted and the style changed with each clerk and era, so every score is compared only with meetings of the same minute-style era (1962-1979 narrative minutes, 1980-2004, 2005-2016, 2017 on) and shown as a percentile of that era. Signals: divided and failed votes, motions that died for lack of a second, tabled or postponed items, amended motions, ordinance readings that stalled, hearings with objections, public appearances, the length of an item's discussion compared with its era, and words such as "objected", "protest", "concern", "thanked" or "commended", each kept with the sentence it came from. Only pages whose reading scores at or above the archive's score target count. The record is scored, not people: no resident is named or scored, and members appear only through their recorded votes. Meetings named as the most contentious or most congenial are published only after a person reviewed them.
1,006items on this topic
486meetings
7.3%share of discussion (era average)
26contentious items
20divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 5 decades (1960s: 1, 1970s: 3, 1980s: 4, 1990s: 1, 2010s: 17).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19624 14% 0.06203
19635 7% 0.14455
196412 13% 0.111,338
19658 10% 0.09887
19666 8% 0.08348
19687 6%1 0.17626
196919 10% 0.071,400
19709 5% 0.05445
19714 5% 0.06193
19726 5% 0.01201
19738 10% 0.05444
197414 14%1 0.06539
197520 13% 0.051,016
197615 9%2 0.11596
197712 8% 0.01447
197812 7% 0.04562
19794 8% 0.02171
19805 5% 0.00193
198116 5%1 0.091,256
198214 8% 0.071,368
198333 10%2 0.122,750
198414 5%1 0.111,143
19857 5% 0.06388
19868 5% 0.03498
198711 7% 0.09975
198811 3% 0.06642
19898 4% 0.06340
19904 2% 0.06234
199825 10% 0.081,575
199986 21%1 0.0711,523
20008 4% 0.09818
200113 6% 0.061,112
200220 11% 0.081,794
20061 3% 0.1156
20071 2% 0.0544
200810 4% 0.01126
20092 4% 0.05145
201015 6% 0.02301
20117 5% 0.0027
201219 7% 0.092,137
201334 5%13 0.311,946
201411 3%2 0.21774
201526 6%1 0.091,439
201636 4% 0.041,861
201756 7% 0.062,739
201830 4%1 0.071,411
201931 4% 0.031,278
202041 7% 0.021,532
202134 5% 0.041,503
202245 8% 0.041,901
202337 7% 0.03982
202452 9% 0.032,020
202539 6% 0.031,635
202631 6% 0.02895

Reviewed examples

Examples appear here once meetings on this topic have been reviewed by a person.

JSON

Data last updated October 21, 2026. Built from the archive's documents; see how the data is built.